Markus Andrews

Boris Johnson’s government could consider reimplementing Covid restrictions in England if the spread of the virus becomes “unacceptable”, according to a senior minister.The comment comes despite the prime minister regularly stating he wanted the removal of legal measures on 19 July to be “irreversible”.Tory MP Lucy Frazer, the government’s solicitor general, told Sky News the government was well aware that “we will see infections rise” this summer.“The reason why restrictions are being taken away is because of the vaccination programme, which will protect people when those infections do rise.”Ms Frazer added: “Of course, if we get into a situation where it is unacceptable and we do need to put back further restrictions, then that of course is something the government will look at.”It follows a warning from Professor Chris Whitty, England’s chief medical officer, that the number of people in hospital with Covid is currently doubling about every three weeks and could reach “quite scary numbers” soon.Speaking at a webinar hosted by the Science Museum on Thursday evening, Prof Whitty said: “I don’t think we should underestimate the fact that we could get into trouble again surprisingly fast.”Prof Whitty said he hoped the public would “take things incredibly slowly” despite the end of legal restrictions on 19 July. He was speaking after UK Covid case numbers jumped to almost 50,000 in just 24 hours.Ministers are facing growing criticism over “confused” guidance given to shoppers, businesses and commuters over the wearing of masks from 19 July. The government said it “expects” people in England to wear a face covering in enclosed spaces, despite ditching the legal requirements.England’s regional mayors have urged ministers to keep masks compulsory across all public transport services to avoid a “ridiculous mismatch” of rules from the beginning of next week.Mr Johnson is said to have gotten “cold feet” over the end of legal restrictions in recent days, but decided it was “too late” to reverse his decision to go ahead with step four of the roadmap, according to The Spectator.Defending the government’s decision to lift remaining curbs from Monday, Ms Frazer said: “We’ve had a really tough time, we’re still asking people to take responsibility and we do need to ask ourselves, if we don’t open up now, when will we be able to open up?” More

Boris Johnson is reportedly supporting plans for a new tax to fund long-overdue reforms to social care in England.Downing Street is “comforable with some sort of tax” to cover universal social care, a government source told The Times.The reforms could also include a cap on how much people have to pay for their own care, it reported.It comes after Matt Hancock, the former health secretary, said the government would have a plan to fix the social care system by the end of the year.But Sajid Javid, who has since taken over his role, said last week he could not put “an exact date” on the commitment — but added that work was “intense”.He said he hoped his department could reveal a “general sense of direction” for a “new offering on social care” soon.According to The Times, the plans for social care reforms are still being finalised but there are “huge efforts from No10 to get the thing over the line”.As well as a new tax to pay for the reforms, the proposals reportedly include extra funding to ensure more people get help and better bay for staff. Back in July 2019, Mr Johnson promised to “fix the crisis in social care once and for all”.Andrew Dilnot, who led a major review into social care funding a decade ago, warned earlier this year that the system could remain unfixed until after the next general election if plans were not revealed in the upcoming spending review. “If we don’t make decisions this year, it’s very hard to see how they can be implemented before the next election,” he said. More

Ministers have been warned they will be undermining devolution if they set up new freeports in Scotland and Wales without the backing of the devolved governments.Scottish Government ministers have made plain they will “challenge any attempts by the UK Government to impose their model in Scotland by legislating in devolved areas”, insisting such a move would be a “breach of the spirit of the devolution settlement”.Holyrood business minister Ivan McKee issued the warning at the same time as he and ministers from Wales demanded clarity on funding for freeports – special economic zones offering tax breaks and lower tariffs for businesses as a part of the UK Government’s “levelling up” agenda.Both the Scottish and Welsh administrations fear being short-changed on this, when compared to the funding being made available for freeports in England.A UK government source branded the claims from the Scottish Government “nonsense”.The source said, “Rather than work constructively with us on creating much needed jobs in Scotland, the Scottish Government would rather waste time playing political games.”Mr McKee, however, insisted the funding proposed by Westminster is “unfair and disadvantages ports in Scotland compared to their competitors in England”.In a letter to Scottish Secretary Alister Jack, he claimed the model proposed by Westminster would see UK ministers decide the location of freeports in Scotland, only for the capital funding to come from Holyrood’s budget.He told the Scottish Secretary: “Collaboration and joint working across devolved and reserved competencies requires joint decision making, and I would ask that you reconsider this position and agree to joint determination, or I must conclude that you are making an offer that you wish us to reject.”The minister insisted the Scottish Government “remains committed to working in partnership with the UK Government” on freeports.But he added: “We cannot sign up to a UK policy which does not respect devolution, undermines the Scottish economy and fails to provide equivalent funding to what is on offer for ports in England.”“UK ministers have failed to work with us to ensure their proposals best meet the needs of business and communities in Scotland.”He also said that if the UK Government presses ahead with plans that fail to include commitments on fair working and net-zero emissions, “the Scottish Government will not support this initiative”.Mr McKee stated: “To ensure there is not a race to the bottom on workers’ rights and the environment, the Scottish Government will challenge any attempts by the UK Government to impose their model in Scotland by legislating in devolved areas, which would be a breach of the spirit of the devolution settlement.”Meanwhile, Welsh finance minister Rebecca Evans said the Government in Cardiff had “consistently attempted to engage constructively with the UK Government and reach agreement on a way of implementing freeports in Wales which is consistent with our priorities and values as a Government”.But she added: “The UK Government is pressuring the Welsh Government to redirect its resources to deliver a UK Government policy priority.“This approach is unacceptable to us, and we have made clear that the UK Government needs to demonstrate the same level of financial commitment to freeports in Wales as they have in England.”Welsh economy minister Vaughan Gething added: “The UK Government’s continued refusal to engage constructively suggests that they would rather risk undermining devolution by implementing a flawed freeport without our support than work with us to deliver benefits for Wales.”A UK Government spokeswoman said: “The UK Government is committed to bringing freeports to Scotland and Wales.”“It has huge potential to boost the Welsh and Scottish economies and create hundreds of highly skilled jobs.“We know there is strong support from stakeholders, who are keen to see progress. We hope the Scottish and Welsh Government will decide to work with us on this.” More

Northern politicians and leaders have expressed astonishment after Boris Johnson admitted he only had a “skeleton” plan to turn his so-called levelling up agenda into reality – despite almost two years in power. The prime minister delivered a keynote speech on Thursday in which he vowed his much-touted policy would “raise living standards, spread opportunity, improve our public services and restore people’s sense of pride in their community”.But he singularly failed to offer any detail on how he would deliver, causing dismay and bewilderment in the very regions the government has repeatedly said it wants to help.“He’s not looking after our areas, he’s saying soundbites,” said Angela Rayner, Labour’s deputy leader and MP for Ashton-under-Lyne, who added in a series of tweets: “Levelling up; is just a press release. Just like the Northern Powerhouse that has never happened.“The only people being “levelled up” are Tory donors getting £££ contracts.”Referring to a moment when the prime minister suggested the public could email him suggestions for how they would like to see levelling up proceed, she appeared flabbergasted.“Boris Johnson – the actual Prime Minister – in a speech that was supposed to set out his policies to address regional inequality, asked the public to email him with ideas,” she said.Dan Jarvis, the mayor of south Yorkshire and MP for Barnsley Central, added: “If the PM wants to get serious about levelling up… this would be a good place to start: concrete goals; genuinely new, transformative investment; and real collaboration with local leaders.”The speech – given at a UK Battery Industrialisation Centre in Coventry – was supposed to constitute a reset on the flagship policy which, up to now, has appeared to offer no real substance beyond handing out capital grants for high street improvements, minor transport upgrades and renovations of leisure facilities. In particular Mr Johnson pushed the idea that more power should be extended to local leaders to drive change.But observers were left bemused at the sheer lack of detail or new announcements – save for the revelation that £50 million is to be invested in community football pitches.Commentators suggested that the prime minister himself appeared not to have an idea of what levelling up was supposed to actually mean.“The PM said his speech on levelling up was a skeleton’,” said Lucy Powell, MP for Manchester Central and shadow secretary of state for housing. “It’s certainly naked and bare. Nothing meaningful in what he said, and he seems to not get that in order to level up it requires a strategic set of interventions into actual places, not jam for all.”Nor was it only politicians who appeared unsatisfied by the lack of detail.And Erica Roscoe, senior research fellow at the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) North, said that, while local leadership empowerment would help boost local economies, it had to be supported by government funding and support.“The evidence is clear – levelling up can only be achieved if places are empowered to level up for themselves,” she said. “From better living standards, to better work, health and a better democracy – leaders across England are beginning to show the difference that devolution can make, but limits to their powers and competition for short term funding initiatives mean they cannot realise their communities’ full potential.“We need a fair, transparent settlement in which power is shared between places and government – not piecemeal projects where government continues to hold all of the strings because that isn’t real, progressive devolution. The prime minister must let go to level up.”Even Conservative MPs appeared lost for words by the speech. Many of the 2019 intake of northern and Midlands Tories – usually highly vocal on social media – had not posted reactions by late afternoon. Those that did chose not to get bogged down in any detail. “Fantastic speech,” wrote Nicola Richards, MP for West Bromwich East. “PM made it clear he wants to go further. There’s lots more work to be done.” More

The government is set to spend twice as much on Brexit administration as its flagship Levelling-up Fund. A total of £12 billion has been set aside for departments and devolved administrations to help them cope with the logistics of leaving the European Union. The new figure was published on Thursday, in the government’s annual statement on European Union spending.The document also confirmed that government departments had to tap billions of taxpayers’ money for no-deal preparations, even though a final agreement was secured. This was because the deal was confirmed just days before the transition exit date at the end of 2020.The cost of Brexit administration, which has grown by nearly £3 billion in the past year, comes on the same day as Boris Johnson laid out his vision for helping poorer regions of the UK catch up with wealthier ones.Some of the increase in Brexit spending was due to the £750 million allocated in July last year, aimed at preparing ports and wider border infrastructure for additional checks on goods following the UK’s exit from the EU. The £12 billion figure dwarfs the £4.8 billion allocated to the Levelling Up Fund, of which £3.6 billion will go towards British towns via the Towns Fund. Mr Johnson sought to defend his speech after it was criticised for its lack of detail saying it was at least “the skeleton” of a plan.Separately, economists said a comparison in the prime minister’s speech with Germany’s efforts to share prosperity across its east and west after unification came with challenges. Germany has spent more than two trillion euros on the effort, and there is still a marked difference in employment between the regions, three decades after reunification. More

The UK is on a fresh collision course with the EU after insisting it does not owe £3.5bn of its whopping Brexit “divorce bill”.For the first time, the Treasury has announced the sum it believes are its liabilities for 43 years of EU membership – putting it at £37.3bn.But, last week, Brussels insisted the true amount is £40.8bn, saying it did not expect the demand to “be contested” by London.The UK has already begun to hand over some of the money, for everything from agreed development projects in deprived regions, and science programmes, to the pensions of EU officials.Payments will be due every month, the EU said last week, with a total of €6.8bn (£5.8bn) expected to be transferred in 2021 – although payments will continue until 2064.The EU’s 2020 accounts put the overall bill at €47.5bn (£40.8bn) and a European Commission spokesperson said: “We have no indication whatsoever that the overall figure will be contested.”But Stephen Barclay, the Treasury chief secretary said: “HM Treasury estimate that the current value of the financial settlement is £37.3bn.“This remains within the government’s previously published reasonable central range, adjusted to take into account the UK’s 31 January 2020 exit date.”The amount is slightly higher than the estimate of £37.1bn given by both then-prime minister Theresa May and the independent Office for Budget Responsibility, in 2018.Mr Barclay issued a report, entitled European Union Finances 2020, which also lists the EU programmes the UK will continue to pay into, despite leaving – but not the sums involved.They are; Horizon Europe (science research), Euratom Research (nuclear innovation), Fusion for Energy (fusion research) and Copernicus (Earth observation).The UK will make “a proportionate contribution”, plus “an administrative contribution for the cost of running these programmes”, varying year-by-year.Also, both the UK and EU fund the Peace Plus programme in Northern Ireland, which “will be the subject of a separate financing agreement”.The list does not include the Erasmus student exchange scheme, which Boris Johnson pulled out of on the grounds of cost – despite previously insisting there was no threat to the UK’s involvement. More

The British government’s flagship levelling-up policy risks falling far short of what’s required, economists have warned. The reprimand comes after prime minister Boris Johnson launched his key policy with a speech on Thursday, ahead of a detailed policy plan expected in the autumn.So far, the figures and timeline attached to the effort are dwarfed by the true funding and long-term view required for meaningful results, economists and policy experts told The Independent.“It’s a matter of decades and trillions not years and billions,” said Torsten Bell, chief executive of the Resolution Foundation, a think tank. Mr Bell said the example of Germany, which Mr Johnson noted in his speech, underscored the shortfalls in the UK effort so far. “Germany has succeeded in levelling up where we have not,” Mr Johnson said.After the fall of the Berlin wall, Germany, the largest economy in Europe, invested more than two trillion euro in trying to make the former communist East as prosperous as the West of the country. Despite the vast effort, there are still significant regional inequalities in the country. Every eastern region lags even the least productive region in the west, according to the Germany’s ministry for the economy, which does an annual examination of the impact of unification. In 2018, unemployment was still more than two percentage points higher in east Germany, at 6.9 per cent than in the west, at 4.8 per cent.Britain’s levelling-up effort also risks falling prey to a politically led rather than economically sound approach, experts warned. Offering local councils in marginal constituencies the chance to bid for a few millions of pounds each, such as the government’s Freeports programme and Town Deals, would have little or no meaningful impact on improving productivity in poorer regions, they said. “You have to look at where this government was voted in: the gains in the midlands and the north were outside the main cities,” said Andrew Carter, chief executive of the Centre for Cities, a think tank. So far that’s where cash has been targeted, at towns rather than cities, he said. “The politics of this take you in one direction. The reality takes you in another, to the big urban areas [such as Manchester and Birmingham],” he said.Instead of infrastructure projects that might only relocate rather than create high value jobs, the government would be better off repairing the adult education sector, said Ian Mulhern, executive director of UK policy and chief economist at the Tony Blair Institute. He added that the government’s figures fell far short of what would be required for its workforce to be well-suited to the needs of a modern, highly productive economy. “It doesn’t seem enough to put a few million back in the pot,” Mr Mulhern said. “It doesn’t even take us back to where we were 10 years ago.”Since the 2000s, there have been severe cuts to spending on adult education. Spending is now almost two-thirds less in real terms than in 2003-4 and around 50 per cent lower than in 2009-10 according to figures from the Institute for Fiscal Studies’ 2020 annual report on education funding.Other countries, such as Switzerland, which perform well on scores of relative economic wellbeing do so because of extreme devolution, allowing their Cantons significant autonomy, said Matthew Whittaker, chief executive of Pro Bono Economics. This has a profound impact on relations between local businesses and communities, Mr Whittaker said.“Companies in Switzerland would see it as their civic duty to invest in local skills. Something we don’t do so much in the UK,” he said. A far greater effort to give decision making over large sums was required to allow cities and regions to fix their particular economic problems with bespoke solutions, Whittaker said. Birmingham has relatively low employment rates, whereas Manchester has a large gap between relative wealth and Bristol’s locals are priced out of the housing market.“We all want a new bridge where that helps you get over a river,” said Mr Whittaker. But taking a cookie-cutter approach with a narrow focus by central government “misses a trick,” he said.The prime minister said he would avoid a “one size fits all template”, but stopped short of explaining how this would be achieved. Instead, he said he wanted others to offer a plan to government for local engagement to make levelling up work admitting that central government had “crushed” local government in the past because “municipal socialist governments were bankrupting cities”.Ultimately, three things need to shift by the autumn if levelling-up is to be taken more seriously, and amount to more than rhetoric, economists believe. “The quantum of cash, the longevity of the commitment, and the flex given to local government,” Mr Carter said. More

Boris Johnson’s government has been warned that Britain’s factories are on the verge of shutting because of the “havoc” caused by the growing army of staff told to self-isolate by the NHS Covid-19 app.Unite said hundreds of employees are off work at several major factory sites, especially in the automotive sector, after being “pinged” as a Covid contact by the app.Latest figures from the NHS show more than 500,000 alerts were sent to users of the app in the week to July 7 – a rise of almost 50 per cent on the previous week and the highest figure so far.It comes as a cabinet minister caused frustration by suggesting a planned tweaking in the sensitivity of the app – in a bid to reduce the number of people alerted – would not happen for several weeks yet.“We’re going to give further thought to how [the app] is a proportionate response,” said communities secretary Robert Jenrick on Thursday. “The government is going to be setting out its plans in the coming weeks.”Unite said some factories are struggling to operate because of app-enforced absences, saying it had been told by one major engine supplier that delays to orders are so severe that work may be permanently moved to China.The union said the government should not wait until 16 August to allow full-vaccinated adults to avoid self-isolation – warning that failure to make changes before 19 July would lead to mass deletion of the app.Unite’s assistant general secretary Steve Turner said: “No one is advocating for coronavirus controls to go out the window … But the reports Unite is receiving from our members and their employers are extremely worrying.”The union leader said: “It is not an exaggeration to say factories are on the verge of shutting and that at some sites hundreds of staff are off work.”Mr Turner added: “It is clear that something has to be done in time for July 19, or else people will simply start deleting the app en masse to avoid isolation notices. There will be public health consequences if test and trace becomes seen as a nuisance rather than an infection control measure.”Car giant Nissan is among those affected by staff shortages at its plant in Sunderland. “Production in certain areas of the plant has been adjusted as we manage a number of staff being required to self-isolate following close contact with Covid-19,” a spokesman said.“The wellbeing of our team is our number one priority and we remain confident in the rigorous safety controls we have on site.”The government has rejected calls to bring forward planned changes to self-isolation rules from 16 August to 19 July. But there were hopes the sensitivity of the app could be quickly “tuned” to reduce the number of alerts sent out.However, it understood that tweaks to how close and how long a person has to be in close contact with someone with Covid before the app “pings” are still several weeks away.Officials are estimating how many extra infections could result if fewer people are asked by the app to isolate, according to The Times.NHS leaders have pleaded with ministers to consider a special exemption for health service staff from current self-isolation rules, with some hospital experiencing serious staff shortages.Saffron Cordery, deputy chief executive at NHS Providers, told The Independent last week that ministers should create an opt-out for health workers “as soon as possible” to allow staff to ignore the app alerts.About one in five adults in the UK have deleted the Covid-19 app from their phone, according to a poll by Savanta ComRes. The survey also found that more than a third of young people, aged between 18 and 34, have deleted the app. More