Markus Andrews

Any UK bid to host the 2030 World Cup must include plans for a ticket price cap to avoid fans being priced out, Labour has urged.While the formal bidding process to host the games begins next year, Boris Johnson reportedly met with the Uefa president last week in No 10 to advocate the case for a joint British and Irish bid.The prime minister said earlier this year that the government was “very keen to bring football home” in 2030, stressing it would be “an absolutely wonderful thing for the country”.As excitement builds ahead of the Euro 2020 final between England and Italy on Sunday evening at Wembley Stadium, prices have soared well above their initial worth via resale sites for thousands of pounds.Tickets for the game — the first major international final for England’s men’s football team since 1966 — would cost almost €600 (£512) at original prices, Labour said.Pointing to ticket prices for the historic 1966 clash between England and West Germany, the party said the average weekly wage would have been enough to buy 40 tickets for the World Cup final.Insisting affordability must be “built into” the 2030 bid, Labour added the government’s review of football governance, announced earlier this year, should include examining a price gap to stop fans being priced out.“England’s success in this tournament has made us all proud and shown again how much joy football can bring,” the shadow culture secretary Jo Stevens said. “Sadly ticket prices have been outrageous, pricing out genuine fans.”She added: “As we bid for 2030, we must make it affordable to watch the World Cup on home soil for the first time since 1966. Let’s bring football home.”Her remarks came as an internal government email sent by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) told officials to encourage ministers not to use the phrase ‘it’s coming home’, due to concerns it does not “go down well overseas”.Highlighting the government’s bid to host the 2030 World Cup jointly with Ireland, it added: “Strategically we need to do all we can to make ourselves welcoming to football authorities”.The consumer group, Which?, told Press Associationthat fans should avoid unofficial ticket sellers, saying England’s win had “understandably kick-started a huge scramble for the chance to be at Wembley”, with some tickets selling for as much as £17,000.Consumer rights expert Adam French said: “Even though some of these websites claim to offer tickets from ‘100 per cent’ trusted sellers, this is often not the case.“You need to be aware that Uefa’s terms and conditions state it can void tickets sold on unofficial sites – something you might not find out until you’re denied entry at the turnstile and left thousands of pounds out of pocket.“If you’re not lucky enough to get your hands on a ticket through the official website you might be better off saving your cash and making plans to watch Gareth Southgate and the lads take on Italy with family and friends at home or in the pub.” More

Al fresco dining will become the norm and pavement licences made permanent as part of government plans to rejuvenate the high street after the pandemic, Boris Johnson is expected to say.In a speech next week on “levelling up” the country, the prime minister will set out further details on how he intends to deliver on the election slogan, which has been criticised for its vagueness and lack of focus.Just last month, a Lords report warned that the prime minister’s vow to level up the country would fail unless he cancels spending cuts, devolves power, and ends “political bias” in handing out funds.No 10, which has described levelling up as the “central purpose” of Mr Johnson’s premiership, said the regeneration of the high street will form a key part of his address next week.Pavement licences are to be extended and then made permanent, with the aim of making it easier and cheaper for pubs, restaurants and cafes to set up tables outside and serve more customers.Temporary permissions for pubs to serve takeaway pints are also set to be extended for 12 months in anticipation of the easing of the vast majority of remaining Covid restrictions on 19 July.A government spokesperson said: “The prime minister is determined to level up the UK and deliver a fairer, stronger society – one where whatever your background and wherever you live, everyone can access the opportunities they need to succeed.“While talent and potential is distributed evenly across the country, opportunity is not,” they added.“That’s why, as we emerge from the pandemic, it’s vital that we do not make the mistakes of the recovery from the financial crash, and seize this moment to ensure a better quality of life for people in every part of the UK.”Labour’s deputy leader Angela Rayner, however, seized on the plans, saying: “We all want life to get back to normal, but a few chairs outside cafes isn’t going to fix the glaring inequality that scars our communities because of the Tories’s wrong priorities.”She added: “After a decade of failure and broken promises, no one can believe a word this incompetent prime minister says. His rhetoric never matches reality.“The Conservatives have choked the life out of our high streets, slashed funding for our young people, and acres of playing fields and football pitches have been dug up and concreted over.”According to No 10, after the speech next week the government will embark on a consultation over the summer ahead of the publication of the white paper on the levelling up programme, which is being spearheaded by MP Neil O’Brien, later in the year. More

Boris Johnson’s promise of more than £11bn to help poorer countries adapt to the climate emergency will be paid for by even deeper cuts to the UK’s other overseas aid projects, The Independent has learned.Failure to provide fresh funding leaves the prime minister’s claim to be leading the world on the environment in tatters ahead of hosting the Cop26 summit in the autumn, campaigners say.It also breaks a United Nations-brokered agreement that the cash must be “new and additional”, they claim, with one likening it to “a bailiff leaving a bunch of flowers”.The government has been criticised on all sides for its existing £4bn-a-year aid cuts, with a project in Malawi to help farmers adapt to climate change among the latest to have fallen victim. At least three similar schemes are expected to follow.The World Health Organisation has already warned that “hundreds of thousands of people” will die from the cuts, amid fury that MPs have been denied the vote on the move they were promised.In Cornwall last month, the prime minister hailed his £11.6bn climate commitment to the developing world – spread over 5 years – and vowed to pester other countries to stump up cash before Cop26 in Glasgow.“We, as the rich nations of the Earth, we need to build our credibility with those countries in asking them to make cuts in CO2,” he said- in relation to contributions to a hoped-for $100bn UN annual fund.“Because this country, which started the Industrial Revolution, is responsible for a huge budget of carbon that’s already in the atmosphere.”But the government has now quietly conceded that the entire £11.6bn – worth around £2.3bn each year, between 2021 and 2026 – will come from official development assistance (ODA), the aid budget.Mr Johnson is already under fire for breaking a promise to give MPs a vote on the decision to slash aid spending from 0.7 to 0.5 per cent of national output, swiping £4bn a year from the pot.Catherine Pettengell, UK director of the Climate Action Network, said the promise of “new and additional” resources for the flagship UN Climate Adaptation Fund was being broken.“Reducing the aid budget, while at the same time drawing on it as the only source of climate finance, will inevitably harm the most vulnerable in society,” she said.Tracy Carty, Oxfam’s senior climate adviser, said: “We welcome the UK’s commitment to climate finance, but when it’s coming from a declining aid budget it’s a bit like your bailiff leaving a bunch of flowers.”And Preet Gill, the shadow international development secretary, condemned “empty greenwashing” that would hit “the world’s most vulnerable people and weaken their ability to take action on the climate crisis”.The revelation that no new money will be made available comes after the government’s independent climate advisers warned the aid cuts are already “undermining” the climate finance pledge.The Prosper (Promoting Sustainable Partnerships for Empowered Resilience) project in Malawi is working with farmers to “reduce the impact of climate shocks” through new agricultural practices, better irrigation and early warning systems.But the £25m scheme, funded from the government’s Building Resilience and Adapting to Climate Change (BRACC) programme, has now been axed, despite being given an A** rating – forcing staff redundancies and the closure of four district offices.“The cut has dealt a severe blow to our efforts to build the resilience of extremely poor communities in Malawi to adapt and cope with climate shocks such as droughts,” said Danny Harvey, executive director of the aid agency Concern Worldwide.The world’s richest countries first committed to spending $100bn a year on a Climate Adaptation Fund to help poor nations adapt to global heating way back in 2009 – but only $79bn has been raised.The UK is seen as being “somewhere in the middle” of the G7, behind France, Germany, Japan and Canada, but ahead of the US and Italy.The fund recognises the “guilt” of industrialised nations – for centuries of carbon emissions – and is meant to help developing countries protect themselves against the devastating effects of global heating, while cutting their own emissions.At Cancun in 2010, the Cop16 summit, rich countries promised funding would be “new and additional”, noting the “urgent and immediate needs of developing countries that are particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change”.But the government has now revealed that the entire £11.6bn counts as ODA – meaning no extra funding will be brought forward.Furthermore, only £1.4bn will be allocated to climate finance in 2021-22, raising fears that most of the spending will be left to the end of the five-year period.But, in Cornwall, Mr Johnson suggested the UK had gone as far as it intends to, saying: “We are now asking other countries to make a change.“We are going to be on everybody’s case between now and the summer, and on into the autumn, to get those commitments and to make sure that we get the world into the right place for Cop.”The Foreign Office defended the arrangement on the grounds that the “international climate finance commitments are new and additional to any previous commitments” to the UN fund.“While the seismic impact of the pandemic on the UK economy has forced us to take tough but necessary decisions, the UK aid budget this year will still be more than £10bn, making us one of the biggest donors in the G7,” a spokesperson said. 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Sajid Javid has warned that NHS waiting lists could rocket to 13 million in the coming months as the health service grapples with the Covid third wave on top of a huge backlog of treatment.In his first interview since taking over as health secretary, Mr Javid said he was “shocked” by the growing numbers waiting for non-Covid care.Hospitals across the country are already in crisis mode because of surging Covid cases and staff shortages due to workers having to self-isolate if they are ‘pinged’ by the Covid app.The Independent revealed on Friday that thousands of patients are being kept on hold for at least two minutes before 999 calls are answered, while new figures show record numbers of trips to A&E last month.Officials have told Mr Javid that situation will worsen in the coming weeks.”What shocked me the most is when I was told that the waiting list is going to get a lot worse before it gets better,” he told the Sunday Telegraph.”It’s gone up from 3.5 million to 5.3 million as of today, and I said to the officials so what do you mean ‘a lot worse’, thinking maybe it goes from 5.3 million to six million, seven million. They said no, it’s going to go up by millions… it could go as high as 13 million.”Hearing that figure of 13 million, it has absolutely focused my mind, and it’s going to be one of my top priorities to deal with because we can’t have that.”It comes as NHS trusts are facing the combined hit of Covid cases rising again, the backlog for other treatments including cancer checks and heart disease,NHS Providers, the membership organisation for NHS trusts in England, warned that up to a fifth of staff could be absent from one NHS trust in just three weeks from now, potentially leading to the cancellation of as many as 900 operations.At least four ambulance trusts have issued “black alerts” in recent days, with queues to admit patients and waits of up to 15 hours inside hospitals.Mr Javid also confirmed that ministers were considering weakening the isolation policy for double-jabbed NHS staff, saying there is “every reason to think that we can take a more proportionate and balanced approach.”Warnings over 19 July, when almost all Covid restrictions are lifted, were echoed by Greater Manchester metro mayor Andy Burnham, who said it was more like “anxiety day” than freedom day.”The Government is simply wrong to frame everything from here as a matter of pure personal choice. It is not,” he told the Observer.”Many people who are vulnerable to the virus have to use public transport and do their food shopping in person. That is why the wearing of face coverings in these settings should have remained mandatory. I will be strongly encouraging the people of Greater Manchester to continue to wear masks on public transport out of respect for others.”Mr Javid said anyone who would not wear a mask in an enclosed space was “just being irresponsible” despite it becoming guidance rather than the law in Step 4 of restrictions lifting.Labour’s shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth said: “Given Sajid Javid now considers it irresponsible to not wear masks then it would be equally irresponsible for his government to carry on with the plan to lift mask requirements while infections are heading to 100,000 a day.”The rate of new cases of coronavirus in most areas of England is now back at levels last seen during the winter.Patient numbers have risen to levels last seen around three months ago.And there has been a very slight increase in the average number of deaths reported each day of people in England who died within 28 days of testing positive for Covid-19.But this is still far below the sort of numbers seen in January and February of this year.The Sunday Times reported that No 10 had asked the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) to look at whether the wait between the two doses of the vaccine could be cut to four weeks in light of the rise in cases. More

BBC bosses are facing calls to sack a board member with links to Downing Street after allegations emerged that he attempted to block a senior editorial appointment on political grounds.Sir Robbie Gibb, a former adviser to Theresa May who was recently appointed a non-executive director at the corporation, was reported to have tried to stop a former Newsnight deputy editor from being selected to oversee the BBC’s news channels.According to the Financial Times, Sir Robbie, who joined the former PM’s turbulent administration after the ill-fated 2017 election and remained until she resigned in 2019, claimed the appointment of Jess Brammar would damage the government’s trust in the broadcaster.Sir Robbie sent a text message to Fran Unsworth, BBC director for news and current affairs, telling her she “cannot make this appointment“, sources told the newspaper. He added that the government’s “fragile trust in the BBC” would be shattered by giving Ms Brammar the newly-created role of executive news editor.Sir Robbie referred The Independent to the BBC for a response when asked for comment on the intervention which reportedly took place on 22 June.A BBC spokesperson said “no recruitment process has been blocked”, adding: “People should wait for the outcome which will be announced in due course.”The corporation defended Sir Robbie’s intervention, saying he had adhered to “a general principle” that “board members are able to discuss issues with other Board members or senior executives.”Labour seized on the allegations, however, saying they raised “very serious questions about Conservative cronyism at the heart of the BBC”. Shadow culture secretary Jo Stevens added that Oliver Dowden, the culture secretary, “must join calls from him to resign or the BBC must sack him immediately for the sake of its own integrity”.Sir Robbie joined the BBC in April as a board member, reportedly on the insistence of key Conservative adviser Douglas Smith. He had spent twenty years at the BBC, including as head of the organisation’s political team at Westminster, before joining Ms May in Downing Street as director of communications – a political appointee.He had been vocal about his concerns over bias at the organisation and said in 2020 that it had been “culturally captured by the woke-dominated group think of some of its own staff”. He also praised the appointment of Tim Davie as director general as demonstrative of plans to tackle bias.Ms Brammar challenged the government during her time as editor of HuffPost UK — a role she left in April this year — when minister Kemi Badenoch launched a public attack on Twitter against then-Huff Post journalist Nadine White for asking her a series of questions about the vaccination rollout.As her editor, Ms Brammar filed a complaint to the Cabinet Office, which declined to investigate. Ms Badenoch remains in her role as minister for equalities, along with responsibilities in the treasury.The episode was also highlighted earlier this year by Samuel Kasumu, a former No 10 adviser who resigned in April. He raised concerns about Ms Badenoch’s conduct over her tirade against Ms White, who is race correspondent at The Independent, suggesting the “ministerial code was breached”.The BBC is currently undergoing sensitive negotiations with the government over a future financial settlement for the broadcaster. The Johnson government has repeatedly questioned the BBC’s impartiality and funding model.Angela Rayner, deputy Labour leader, added that Sir Robbie’s alleged intervention was “Tory cronyism” at work. He was trying to “influence the BBC to suit the government”, she said on Twitter. More

Ministers are being encouraged not to use the phrase ‘It’s Coming Home’ when supporting the England football team, with officials warning it does not “go down well overseas”.In a briefing note — leaked ahead of the England versus Italy final of the Euro 2020 championship — the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), however, conceded it was “swimming against the tide”.It also highlighted the government’s bid to jointly host the 2030 World Cup with Ireland, adding that “strategically we need to do all we can to make ourselves welcoming to football authorities”.The warning not to use the phrase ‘It’s Coming Home’ — taken from the Lightning Seeds’ Euro 96 anthem ‘Three Lions’ — appeared in an email circulated by DCMS and leaked to Politics Home.“As stressed before, please do encourage your ministers not to use ‘It’s Coming Home’ with the news media and social media,” it states.“I know we’re swimming against the tide, but we know this does not go down well overseas — and strategically we need to do all we can to make ourselves welcoming to football authorities when the UK and Ireland is scoping out a bid for the 2030 World Cup.”However, the contents of the email do not appear to have reached Boris Johnson and other senior ministers’ inboxes, who have liberally used a version of the phrase in recent weeks to celebrate England’s progress through to the Euro 2020 final.After England defeated Denmark in the semi-final at Wembley stadium on Wednesday evening, the prime minister posted on social media: “Now to the final. Let’s bring it home”.Tweeting her congratulations at Gareth Southgate’s England squad, the home secretary, Priti Patel, posted “#it’scominghome” ahead of the semi-final, quickly followed by: “Football’s coming home”.It comes as calls grow for the public to be given one-off bank holiday if England emerges victorious in the final on Sunday evening, with over 300,000 people signing a petition.No 10 have not ruled out an extra bank holiday, but earlier this week Downing Street said it will set out any celebrations, such as a victory parade for the England team “in due course”.“I don’t want to pre-empt the outcome of Sunday’s match,” the prime minister’s spokesman said. “Clearly we want England to go all the way and win the final, and then we will set out our plans in due course.”The Independent has contacted DCMS for comment. More

Customers may require Covid-19 certificates or vaccine passports to enter entertainment venues in England from autumn, according to reports.The government is said to be considering making the documentation mandatory in venues such as pubs, bars and restaurants, where it would be used by customers to prove they have had either both doses of a coronavirus vaccine or a negative test the day before in a bid to tackle the fourth wave of the coronavirus.It is hoped the move will increase vaccine uptake among the younger demographics, The Times newspaper has reported.Currently, 86.8 per cent of people in England have had a first dose of a coronavirus vaccine and 65.5 per cent have had both, according to official figures from Public Health England.However, vaccine uptake has slowed, recent figures show, with first doses halving in two weeks. The average number of doses given out per day is at the lowest since April.The prime minister, Boris Johnson, this week announced that the majority of social distancing measures will be lifted on 19 July, including enforced mask-wearing, despite a rise in cases related to the Delta variant.Capacity restrictions on pubs, restaurants and other public events are also expected to be lifted.The number of coronavirus infections linked to the dominant Delta variant have increased by 54,268 in the past week, a rise of 34 per cent, Public Health England has said. The variant now counts for 99 per cent of all cases that have been genetically sequenced.In total 216,249 confirmed and probable cases of the Covid-19 Delta variant have been identified in the UK, up from 161,981 cases in the previous week.Hospital admissions for 9 July are at 509, totalling 2,672 in the last week – a jump of 55.9 per cent.Britons are growing wary of the relaxation of rules: a poll by Ipsos MORI for The Economist on Thursday shows that nearly 70 per cent want to see face masks made compulsory in shops and on public transport for a certain period after 19 July, when the government plans to lift all restrictions in England and 64 per cent would like them to remain in place until coronavirus is controlled worldwide. More

The UK government does not regard the Northern Ireland protocol it agreed with the EU as part of Boris Johnson’s withdrawal deal as “definitive”, Brexit minister David Frost has said.Despite the protocol forming part of an international treaty signed by the UK, Lord Frost said it was not “reasonable” to regard its text as the final word on arrangements for the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic.In comments that will be seen as deeply ironic in the light of the government’s implementation of Brexit on the back of a 52/48 vote, the PM’s senior negotiator argued that the protocol was difficult to operate because it enjoyed only 50/50 support among the Northern Irish public.He told the Northern Ireland Assembly that “a broader level of consent” was needed to make such fundamental changes work.Giving evidence to Stormont’s Executive Office Committee, Lord Frost acknowledged that the deal that he negotiated and Mr Johnson agreed in 2019 has had a “chilling effect” on British exports to Northern Ireland and prompted a shift in supply chains towards the Republic of Ireland. He said there was evidence that mainland pharmaceutical companies had either begun to withdraw from sales of medicines to Ulster or plan to do so by the end of the year. Concerns about the operation of the protocol were universal among the province’s businesses, he told MLAs.Lord Frost again blamed disruption on over-zealous EU implementation of the terms agreed in 2019, and suggested that the text could be amended or re-interpreted in order to improve the flow of trade between the British mainland and Northern Ireland.“I don’t think it’s right to look at the protocol as a definitive text that was there in October 2019 and there’s nothing more to say,” he said. “It’s very clear, reading the text, that that’s not the case.”As discussions with the EU remain stalled over Britain’s refusal to accept alignment on veterinary standards, Lord Frost repeated London’s threat to suspend the protocol by invoking Article 16.“All options remain on the table”, he said, adding that the government will set out its position in a statement to parliament before summer recess begins on 22 July.Under Article 16, the UK can take action if the protocol gives rise to “serious economic, societal or environmental difficulties” or “diversion of trade”, but risks triggering retaliatory tariffs from Brussels.Lord Frost came under fire from nationalist members of the Executive Office Committee at Stormont, who told him that the UK government should implement the deal it had agreed.“It’s your deal,” said the committee’s SDLP chair Colin McGrath. “If your deal is so shoddy, why did you negotiate it?”And Sinn Fein’s Martina Anderson – an MEP at the time of the Brexit talks – told Lord Frost: “You were Britain’s chief negotiator for Brexit. Your eyes were wide open and your fingerprints are on every page of the protocol.“The majority of people here in the North rejected Brexit and the majority of parties here in the Assembly, who represent the majority of people, rejected Brexit but support the protocol.“You were the chief negotiator. You were not asleep. You knew there were going to be trade adjustments. The dogs in the street knew that there were going to be trade adjustments. Even the DUP Brexit cheerleaders knew there were going to be trade adjustments and they felt you threw them under a bus.”Ms Anderson said that a recent poll had shown just 6 per cent in Northern Ireland trusted the UK government over the protocol.But Lord Frost responded that another poll had found a 50/50 split in Northern Ireland over whether the protocol was “desirable”.He said: “If you have a 50/50 division of opinion on something as fundamental as that, it makes it very hard to operate.“That’s the situation we are in. The protocol depends on a broader level of consent if it is going to work.“Therefore we’ve got to find a way of ensuring that we can get that consent, and that political problem seems to us to be at the core of the difficulties that we’re trying to solve.”He blamed Theresa May’s administration for “infelicities” in the protocol that were currently causing disruption and tension in Northern Ireland. More