Markus Andrews

Labour staff have been told there will be mass redundancies, apparently blamed on members quitting the party and the cost of antisemitism cases.Plans are being discussed to shed up to 90 jobs – around a quarter of the payroll – as Keir Starmer seeks to repair Labour’s shattered finances.A meeting was brought forward to Tuesday, after the plans leaked, leading to furious criticism from David Evans, Labour’s general secretary – who accused the leaker of feeding “the Tories’ agenda”.“I am angry that this has happened because of the impact it will have on party staff,” Mr Evans said, in an email which was also leaked, to the Labour List website.“Leaking information to the press simply lets the government off the hook and plays into the Tories’ agenda.”Mr Evans was reported to have blamed Labour’s financial crisis on lost members and the fallout from the antisemitism scandal, under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership.Voluntary severance is believed to have been offered to all staff funded by the ruling National Executive Committee.Labour’s most recent annual report showed it employs 367 staff were employed by the party at the end of 2019, many at its Southside headquarters in Victoria, London.There have already been layoffs among community organisers – the grassroots campaigners favoured by Mr Corbyn, but whose value was disputed by party activists.At an NEC meeting today, the body is expected to approve the expulsion of members of four far-left factions which will be proscribed.The groups – Resist, Labour Against the Witchhunt, Labour In Exile and Socialist Appeal – are accused of downplaying antisemitism or extreme views.The move was attacked by Richard Burgon, a close Corbyn ally, who accused Sir Keir of waging war on “a political tradition the Labour Leader started his political life in”.“The Labour Leadership needs to be taking the fight to the Tories as they cause yet more suffering with their reckless response to this crisis, not chasing young socialists out of our Party,” Mr Burgon tweeted.Andrew Scattergood, co-chair of the grassroots group Momentum, said, of the job losses: “Keir Starmer took over the richest party in Britain and has run it into the ground.“By cynically rowing back on his ten pledges and by driving out grassroots members who don’t agree with him, he has brought our party to the brink of disaster.”Labour’s finances have been hit hard by fighting three general elections in six years and as some leftwing members leave following the party’s shift to the right.There have also been a string of costly legal cases, after the antisemitism scandal led to an official rebuke from the equalities watchdog – and Mr Corbyn’s suspension from the parliamentary party.The party paid out a six-figure sum to settle a case brought by seven former employees and a veteran BBC journalist, admitting it defamed them in the aftermath of a Panorama investigation. More

The UK has said it will send two warships into Asian waters to be permanently based there. The vessels will be assigned to the Indo-Pacific region from later this year, according to the British defence ministry. This is set to follow plans for a British aircraft carrier and escort ships to carry out exercises in the Philippine Sea alongside forces from other countries in August. Plans for the high-profile visit by the carrier strike group come as London deepens security ties with Tokyo, which has expressed growing alarm in recent months over China’s territorial ambitions in the region, including Taiwan.Ben Wallace, the UK defence secretary, has indicated this Royal Navy fleet will sail through disputed waters claimed by China during the operation.After the group’s first ever deployment, the UK defence ministry said two ships – HMS Spey and HMS Tamar – will be permanently stationed in the Indo-Pacific region.The offshore patrol vessels will also contribute to a Littoral Response Group in the coming years, according to the department. They will be depoyed in the Indo-Pacific at the end of this August and will be supported by Australia, Japan and Singapore, among other partners, in their operations. These ships are two of the Royal Navy’s new offshore patrol vessels, with the HMS Spey – which has a crew of 45 – commissioned into the fleet this week. “The commissioning of Spey demonstrates a further development to the Royal Navy’s role in Global Britain,” Rear Admiral Simon Asquith OBE from the Royal Navy said on Monday.He said the vesel will be deployed to the Indo-Asian Pacific region “for the foreseeable future” “Once deployed, they will work closely with allies and partners to support maritime security in the region,” the Royal Navy’s commander of maritime operations added. Additional reporting by Reuters More

Downing Street has moved swiftly to slap down a minister who suggested workers and employers could decide whether or not to follow the NHS coronavirus app’s recommendation to self-isolate.Paul Scully, the business minister, appeared to say on Tuesday that the app’s instructions were merely advisory. Just two hours later, No 10 instead said it was “crucial” to self-isolate when instructed.Being “pinged” by the program would allow someone to make “informed decisions”, Mr Scully originally said, adding that the decision on whether to self-isolate was “up to individuals and employers”.Front-line NHS workers are exempt from having to follow the app’s instructions, and that exemption is being extended to other key workers amid what employers have called a “ping-demic”. Thousands of people have been forced to stay away from work, causing shops, pubs and even factories to close.Mr Scully told Times Radio: “I think the exemption is being extended beyond the NHS to critical workers. So critical infrastructure and these kind of things.“We’ve seen the Metropolitan line in London close, for example, because of a handful of really crucial signal workers having to self-isolate. So it’s those kind of things that we’re extending to.“It’s important to understand the rules. You have to legally isolate if you are … contacted by Test and Trace, or if you’re trying to claim isolation payments.“The app is there to give, to allow you to make informed decisions. And I think by backing out of mandating a lot of things, we’re encouraging people to really get the data in their own hands to be able to make decisions on what’s best for them, whether they’re employer or an employee.”Asked whether this meant people should or should not self-isolate if “pinged”, he said: “We want to encourage people to still use the app to be able to do the right thing, because we estimate it saves around 8,000 lives.”However, he added that it was “up to individuals and employers”.A Downing Street spokesperson later said: “Isolation remains the most important action people can take to stop the spread of the virus.“Given the risk of having and spreading the virus when people have been in contact with someone with Covid it is crucial people isolate when they are told to do so, either by NHS Test and Trace or by the NHS Covid app.“Businesses should be supporting employees to isolate, they should not be encouraging them to break isolation.”The government has rejected calls from businesses to reduce the sensitivity of the app.Additional reporting by Press Association More

Dominic Cummings has made a host of claims over his former boss, Boris Johnson, in his first TV interview. The ex-Downing Street aide has criticised the prime minister for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic after leaving his role as adviser at the end of last year. While he has made multiple claims about the PM in his blog, on Twitter and during a committee appearance before MPs, his first broadcast interview is set to air on Tuesday.Mr Cummings has taken questions from Laura Kuenssberg, the BBC’s political editor, as he spoke about the PM and the Covid pandemic.The former top adviser to the PM is set to make more accusations in the interview, including that Mr Johnson resisted a second national lockdown because he believed those dying were “essentially all over 80”. Mr Cummings is also expected to accuse his one-time boss of putting “his own political interests ahead of people’s lives”.The interview is set to be aired at 7pm on Tuesday evening and will be shown on BBC Two.It is also expected to show the ex-adviser making other claims, including over how Mr Johnson spoke about The Telegraph, where he used to work as a journalist, and comments over the NHS during the Covid pandemic. More

A plan to hike national insurance payments to finally tackle the social care crisis has been attacked as unfair on younger workers – while older people would escape paying more.Ministers appear to be backing away from a new tax on all over-40s, including pensioners, in favour of increasing NI, a move which has enjoyed greater public support in the past.The issue has sparked an intense battle between Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak, his Chancellor, but the pair are said to be close to an agreement.But the Resolution Foundation condemned “a terrible way to raise the funds required” and both senior Tory and Labour politicians echoed the criticism.“Whilst I welcome the government’s focus on fixing social care, this is an unfair way of doing it,” tweeted Andy Burnham, the Greater Manchester mayor and a former Labour health secretary.“NI is a regressive tax paid by working-age adults. How can it be right to ask a generation already saddled with university fees & high housing costs to pick up the whole tab?”Gavin Barwell, Theresa May’s former chief of staff, said the government was right to push up taxes to fix social care but “wrong to pick national insurance”.The tax, which is not paid by anyone receiving the state pension is “regressive”, he said, adding: “Why should older people with good incomes not contribute?”And Torsten Bell, the Resolution Foundation’s chief executive, said: “It’s a tax disproportionately loaded on to younger and lower-paid workers, compared to a fairer rise in income tax.“Why we would target a tax rise on the groups who have been hardest hit by the economic impact of this pandemic, while exempting older and wealthy individuals, is completely beyond me.”Increasing NI by 1 percentage point – for both employers and employees – would raise £10bn a year and would probably be dubbed a new “health and social care levy”.Initially, it would be used to cut alarming NHS waiting lists for treatment, which are feared could rise from 5.3 million to 13 million patients.It would then be spent to cap care costs, along the lines of a decade-old proposal to limit costs to £50,000 so families do not end up selling their homes, and plug growing gaps in care treatment.The plan was due to be announced this week, as Mr Johnson faced the embarrassment of two years since he arrived in No 10 claiming to have a worked-up solution to the care crisis.But the prime minister’s isolation – and that of Mr Sunak, after the pair were in close contact with the Covid-infected health secretary Sajid Javid – means a likely delay until the autumn.Paul Johnson, head of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, said: “Funding social care just from national insurance would be very inequitable.“It would be a continuation of a long-term policy of hitting those of working age while protecting pensioners even for something designed to benefit people well over pension age. It’s a question of fairness.” More

Tony Blair did not write or approve a message from the UK government saying it had failed to intervene in the 19th century Irish Famine, it has emerged.It is estimated that around one million people died of starvation and disease in Ireland in the late 1840s after potato blight devastated food supplies.Some two million more people emigrated, the majority of them crossing the Atlantic to the United States, between 1845 and 1892. Critics have accused the UK government at the time, which ruled Ireland, of not doing enough to help plug the gap in food supplies.Speaking on Mr Blair’s behalf in a 1997 address to commemorate the famine in Cork, southern Ireland, actor Gabriel Byrne stopped short of apologising but said the people of Ireland were failed by the British government policy.Mr Blair had been unable to attend the event.His remarks were written and approved by Sir John Holmes, the former PM’s private secretary, previously classified documents published by National Archive in Kew, reveal.Sir John said he had tried and failed to contact his boss to get the message signed off.He wrote: “I tried to clear the principle of this with you [Mr Blair] this afternoon by telephone, but you were not around.”Sir John said he was keen to avoid the impression of a “snub” by London and so sent it to the British Embassy in Dublin “off my own bat”.Mr Byrne added in the message: “The famine was a defining event in the history of Ireland and Britain. It has left deep scars.”That one million people should have died in what was then part of the richest and most powerful nation in the world is something that still causes pain as we reflect on it today.”Those who governed in London at the time failed their people through standing by while a crop failure turned into a massive human tragedy.”While political speeches often have input from aides, Mr Blair’s was significant for the positive reception it received.In his letter to Mr Blair, Sir John anticipated the message “may get quite a lot of publicity”, though he said it fell “well short of an apology” and merely acknowledged that the government of the day “could have done more” to prevent the tragedy.Mr Holmes wrote: “I hope this does not cause you any problems. It should go down well with the Irish, and I cannot see anyone here or in Northern Ireland seriously objecting.”Separate documents released by the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland last year contained a restricted letter from Donald Lamont, an official in the British government’s Republic of Ireland affairs section, dated 2 June 1997, which discussed the PM’s statement on the famine.It said: “I do not think I could have wished for a better response to the prime minister’s statement than that of the Taoiseach reported in your telegram number 178.”The Irish Embassy have also been warm in their reaction.”Additional reporting by Press Association More

Rishi Sunak should have told David Cameron to stop trying to lobby him via text message and instead use more formal channels, a cross-party committee of MPs has suggested.In a report published on Monday the influential Treasury Select Committee said the Greensill scandal showed that the rules around lobbying were too weak and needed to be overhauled.The committee said the former prime minister should have been “encouraged” into “more formal methods” at “the initial stage of his lobbying”. Mr Cameron was revealed to have sent text messages to the chancellor asking for taxpayer cash to prop up the bank he worked as an advisor for, Greensill Capital. He unsuccessfully lobbied for the bank to be given access to a publicly funded coronavirus loan scheme; the bank ultimately gained access to a different scheme.The revelations raised questions about the nature of lobbying in Westminster and the access former politicians and their confidants are given to government.The committee report says: “The Treasury should have encouraged Mr Cameron at the initial stage of his lobbying into more formal methods of communication, and there should have been a discussion as to whether Mr Cameron’s ongoing contact posed any reputational risks to the Treasury, and whether, as a consequence, mitigation was required. “In the light of these events we expect the Treasury to put in place more formal processes to deal with any such lobbying attempts by ex-prime ministers or ministers in the future and to publish the process which they will follow should similar circumstances recur.”The committee accepted that no rules had been broken, but added that they were clearly “of insufficient strength and there is a good case for strengthening them”.Angela Rayner, Labour’s deputy leader, said the fact that Mr Cameron had broken no rules showed how bad the rules were. “The fact that David Cameron apparently did not break any rules during the Greensill scandal proves that the rules that are supposed to regulate lobbying are completely unfit for purpose,” she said.“The Advisory Committee on Business Appointments (ACOBA) system is pointless and toothless. As this case shows, it causes more harm than good by giving a veil of legitimacy to the rampant cronyism, sleaze and dodgy lobbying that is polluting our democracy under the Tories.“Labour will ban former Ministers from lobbying government for at least five years after they leave office, and overhaul the current broken system and replace it with an Integrity and Ethics Commission that will close the revolving door and stamp out sleaze.”Mel Stride, the Conservative MP who chairs the Treasury committee, said: “Our report sets out important lessons for the Treasury and our financial system resulting from both Greensill Capital’s collapse and David Cameron’s lobbying.“The Treasury should have encouraged David Cameron into more formal lines of communication as soon as it had identified his personal financial incentives. However, the Treasury took the right decision to reject the objectives of his lobbying, and the Committee found that Treasury ministers and officials behaved with complete and absolute integrity.“There are a number of lessons for the operation of our financial system, including the need for urgent reform of the change in control regulations for the acquisition of banks, reform of the appointed representatives regime, and the need for more data on non-bank lending.” “We look forward to the conclusions of the other inquiries on the collapse of Greensill Capital, and will continue to follow developments closely.”A HM Treasury spokesperson said: “This report is clear that the Treasury was right to consider Greensill’s proposals, right to ultimately reject their proposals, and concludes that the Treasury behaved with absolute integrity throughout the process.” More

Boris Johnson refused to take the country into lockdown in the autumn because “the people dying are essentially all over 80”, leaked phone messages appear to show.The WhatsApp chats, passed to the BBC by former No 10 chief of staff Dominic Cummings, also show the prime minister saying he did not “buy all this NHS overwhelmed stuff” months before deaths soared to over 1,000 a day.And in his first interview since leaving No 10, Mr Cummings claimed the PM had to be stopped from going to see the Queen at the start of the pandemic. Mr Johnson had already been told to avoid contact with the elderly after staff at No 10 had been taken ill.Downing Street has not questioned the veracity of the leaked messages or denied the claims about the handling of the pandemic – though Mr Johnson’s office says the incident involving the Queen did not take place.“He [Boris Johnson] said we should never have done the first lockdown, he said that repeatedly in meetings in No 10,” Mr Cummings, who quit in acrimony last year, told the BBC. “After the first wave passed and after he came back to work, initially his view was essentially, thank goodness we did do that, but very quickly, as the Telegraph and various parts of the media and Tory Party started screaming, he then basically reverted and said, actually the whole thing was a disaster, we should never have done it, I was right in February, we should basically just ignore it and just let the thing wash through the country and not destroy the economy and move on.”Mr Cummings claimed that Mr Johnson referred to TheTelegraph newspaper, which backed his leadership campaign and previously payed him £250,000 a year on top of his politicians’ salary to write a column, as “my real boss”.Though public and scientific support for strong anti-Covid measures has remained high throughout the pandemic, a section of the Conservative-supporting press and some Tory MPs have pushed back against restrictions at every opportunity. The former aide said the prime minister rejected the advice of chief scientific advisor and medical officer Patrick Vallance and Chris Whitty when they told him to lock down hard and early. Messages apparently dating from 15 October – two weeks before the prime minister ordered another lockdown – appear to show Mr Johnson unperturbed by the mounting death toll.“I must say I have been slightly rocked by some of the data on Covid fatalities,” the messages appear to show the prime minister saying. “The median age is 82 – 81 for men 85 for women. That is above life expectancy. So get Covid and live longer. “Hardly anyone under 60 goes into hospital (4 per cent) and of those virtually all survive. And I no longer buy all this NHS overwhelmed stuff. Folks I think we may need to recalibrate.”Mr Cummings told the broadcaster: “His [Boris Johnson’s] attitude at that point [autumn 2020] was a weird mix of, er, partly it’s all nonsense and lockdowns don’t work anyway and partly well this is terrible but the people who are dying are essentially all over 80 and we can’t kill the economy just because of people dying over 80.” “Lots of people heard the prime minister say that; the prime minister texted that to me and other people.”“He put his own political interests ahead of people’s lives for sure.”It has previously been reported that Mr Johnson said he would rather the “bodies pile high in their thousands” than order another lockdown – a claim that has not been denied by No 10.Recounting Mr Johnson’s alleged attempt to visit the Queen when he may have been exposed to Covid-19, Mr Cummings said: “I said, what are you doing, and he said, I’m going to see the Queen and I said, what on earth are you talking about, of course you can’t go and see the Queen. He said, ah, that’s what I do every Wednesday, sod this, I’m gonna go and see her.” “I said to him [Boris Johnson], there’s people in this office who are isolating, you might have coronavirus, I might have coronavirus, you can’t go and see the Queen. What if you go and see her and give the Queen coronavirus? “You obviously can’t go … I just said if you, if you give her coronavirus and she dies, what are you gonna do? You can’t do that, you can’t risk that, that’s completely insane. And he said, he basically just hadn’t thought it through, he said, yeah, ‘holy s***, I can’t go.’” A Downing Street spokesperson said: “Since the start of the pandemic, the prime minister has taken the necessary action to protect lives and livelihoods, guided by the best scientific advice,” the spokesperson said. “The government he leads has delivered the fastest vaccination rollout in Europe, saved millions of jobs through the furlough scheme and prevented the NHS from being overwhelmed through three national lockdowns. “The government is entirely focused on emerging cautiously from the pandemic and building back better.” More