Markus Andrews

The Treasury has been accused of “recklessly” suppressing information relating to a sick pay scheme for people forced to self-isolate during the height of the second wave of the Covid pandemic.According to emails at the start of 2021 between civil servants seen by Politico, the department instructed government officials not to publicise how furlough could be used to access payments during the isolation period.Supporting people – particularly those in low-paid jobs – has been a major point of contention during the crisis, with scientists and opposition MPs repeatedly criticising the amount of financial support on offer for those required to self-isolate.Under government rules, people who test positive for Covid-19 or are notified by Test and Trace after coming into close contact with a positive case, must self-isolate at home or face the prospect of a fine.Ministers have advertised the ability of employees to access Statutory Sick Pay (SSP) – one of the lowest rates in Europe – while a one-off £500 payment is also available for people on low incomes who are forced to self-isolate.But Politico reported the little-known provision in the Treasury’s Job Retention Scheme allows for employers to temporarily furlough staff who are isolating to access sick pay. Under the scheme announced at the onset of the pandemic, employees can receive 80 per cent of their wages.It was added a senior official protested that the department was blocking guidance that would have explained to employers and employees how to access money.“Furlough can be used to cover self-isolation, but HMT are reluctant to say this explicitly in the guidance because it could lead to employees being furloughed who do not need to be,” the official said. “Incentive payments are too low to incentivise employees to take tests due to risk of loss of income.”Labour’s shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, Bridget Phillipson, said the revelations were “shocking”, adding: “The government were advised time and time again how crucial a proper self-isolation system is for curbing the spread of infection, and protecting people’s lives and livelihoods.“It is shameful and reckless that the chancellor ignored professional advice and put countless people and workplaces at unnecessary risk when he had the opportunity to help”.Advice currently available on the government’s website states that people on sick leave or are self-isolating because of Covid-19 “may want to speak to [their] employer about whether you are eligible for the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (furlough)”.“You may be eligible for Statutory Sick Pay (SSP) while you are on sick leave or self-isolating,” it says. “If you are put on furlough while on sick leave or self-isolating, you will no longer get sick pay but should be treated as any other furloughed employee.”The current eligibility criteria for using the scheme includes those at the highest risk of severe illness from Covid-19 and unable to work from home, alongside those unable to work, including from home, “due to caring responsibilities arising from coronavirus”.Speaking on Thursday, professor Stephen Reicher, a member of the Spi-B group of behavioural scientists advising ministers, said sick pay in the UK was, apart from the United States, “virtually the worst in the world” and that “only about 50 per cent of people are self-isolating”.“It’s not only about payment, it’s also about other forms of support,” he told LBC.A Treasury spokesperson said: “It has always been clear that the purpose of the furlough scheme is to support jobs – we’ve been upfront about that from the start.“The guidance sets out that the scheme is not intended for short-term absences from work due to sickness or self-isolation. We have a specific support package in place for those self-isolating due to coronavirus, including £500 one off payments for those on low incomes.“If an employer wants to furlough an employee for business reasons and they are currently off sick then they are eligible to do so as with other employees. This has been set out in guidance since April last year.” More

All over-18s in England are to be invited to receive coronavirus jabs from Friday, health secretary Matt Hancock has announced.Mr Hancock said that the move came as the UK passed the milestone of giving a first dose of vaccine to four out of five adults.He told the annual conference of the NHS Confederation that the speed and scale of protection offered to people across the country was “an incredible achievement”.Mr Hancock said that it was “remarkable” that the UK had been able to reach this point within six months of the first non-experimental vaccinations in December and the peak of the second wave of Covid-19 in January.He told the conference: “We’ve come such a long way since then, to the point that I can confirm that, as of today, we have given a first dose of vaccine to four out of every five adults in the United Kingdom.“And the speed of deployment means that tomorrow we can open vaccination to everyone over the age of 18.“I think it’s an incredible achievement.”Mr Hancock said that, while there were still just over 1,000 Covid patients in hospital, “we know that the vaccine is our way out of the pandemic”. More

Labour today demanded a parliamentary vote on the government’s trade deal with Australia, warning it will undercut British farmers and undermine animal welfare standards.Shadow trade secretary Emily Thornberry told MPs in the House of Commons that the deal announced on Tuesday had broken the government’s promises to the British people and thrown farmers “to the wolves”.And she said it exposed international trade secretary Liz Truss as “not up to the job”, as it gave Australia tariff-free access to UK markets that was not offered to Canberra by other trade partners like Japan and South Korea.The first trade deal to be sealed by the government since the UK left the EU is estimated to add no more than 0.02 per cent to UK GDP and save consumers an average of 1p a week, making up only a tiny proportion of sales lost due to new trade barriers with Europe created by Brexit. Farming organisations warn it risks driving domestic beef and lamb producers out of business due to an influx of cheap meat.But Ms Truss told MPs in a statement that it was “truly historic” and “shows that global Britain is a force for free and fair trade around the world”.However, she refused to promise a parliamentary vote, saying it would be subject to the ratification processes set down in the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act (CRAG).Under the terms of the Act, treaty-making is a prerogative power for the government, and parliament has only a limited role in approving trade deals, with MPs likely to be denied a vote in the Commons.Rather than passing a bill to ratify the deal, ministers must simply lay it before parliament, giving MPs 21 days to object to ratification. While this could theoretically lead to a debate and vote, there are means for ministers to avoid this and it has not yet happened since the CRAG process was introduced in 2010.Ms Thornberry said: There is only one question that matters today. Will (Ms Truss) guarantee to give parliament not just a debate but a binding vote on the deal that she has agreed with Australia, so that we can reject the terms that she has agreed on farming and send someone else back to the table to get a better deal for our country?”The shadow trade secretary listed practices denied to UK farmers on welfare grounds which she said were used in Australia, including branding cattle with hot irons, keeping pregnant pigs in sow stalls, allowing slurry to pollute rivers and transporting livestock for 48 hours without rest, food or water.“All practices in common use in Australia, all practices banned in Britain,” said Ms Thornberry. “And yet under the deal that she has signed, the meat from farms that use those practices will come into our country tariff-free, undermining British standards, undercutting British farmers and breaking the promises made to the British people.”Citing a former Australian trade negotiator who said the country had “never done as well” in any previous deal, she said: “The secretary of state told the newspapers in April that she would sit her inexperienced Australian counterpart in an uncomfortable chair and show him how to play at this level.“I’m afraid this deal has exposed the secretary of state as the one who was not up to the job. Britain needs and deserve better.”Ms Truss insisted that the Australian deal will be scrutinised by the new Trade and Agriculture Commission, and that MPs will have the opportunity to block it through the CRAG process if they do not support it.She told MPs that the deal delivers on “both beef and liberty”.“I don’t buy this defeatist narrative that British agriculture can’t compete,” she said. “We have a high-quality, high-value product which people want to buy, particularly in the growing middle classes of Asia.” She also told MPs they can “rest assured that this deal upholds our world class standards from food safety to animal welfare, to the environment”. Ms Truss went on: “This deal with our great friend and ally Australia is just the start of our new post-Brexit trade agreements, and it’s fundamental about what type of country we want Britain to be. Do we want to be a country that embraces opportunity, looks to the future, believes its industries can compete and that its product is just what the world wants? “Or do we accept the narrative some peddle that we need to stay hiding beyond the same protectionist walls that we had in the EU because we can’t possibly compete and succeed? To my mind the answer lies in free trade and our country has always been at its best when we’ve been a free trading nation.” More

Northern Ireland’s biggest political parties appear set to agree on a new government Thursday after ending a standoff that threatened to scuttle the Protestant-Catholic power-sharing administration.The pro-British Democratic Unionist Party has picked Northern Ireland Assembly member Paul Givan as its choice of first minister. But the Irish nationalist party Sinn Fein had threatened not to fill the post of deputy because of a feud about protections for the Irish language.That would have mothballed the administration — under the power-sharing arrangements set up as part of Northern Ireland’s peace accord, a government can’t be formed unless both roles are filled.The language issue cuts to the heart of tensions between Northern Ireland’s mostly Catholic nationalists, who see themselves as Irish, and Protestants who largely identify as British.The Northern Ireland Assembly, in which the DUP is the largest party, has failed to pass a law ensuring protections for the Irish and Ulster Scots languages, despite the power-sharing parties agreeing last year to do so.But early Thursday the British government said it would step in and pass the legislation in the U.K. Parliament if the Belfast assembly did not do it by September.Sinn Fein welcomed the move, with party leader Mary Lou McDonald saying it had broken the “logjam of DUP obstructionism.” The party said it would nominate Michelle O’Neill as deputy first minister.DUP leader Edwin Poots accused Sinn Fein of creating instability, but confirmed that “Paul Givan will be nominated for the position of first minister at the earliest opportunity.”However, he faced anger from many of his party’s senior politicians, who said he shouldn’t proceed before consulting with them first.The new government follows the resignation of Arlene Foster as first minister and DUP leader. She quit in April, under pressure from her party over her handling of Brexit and her perceived softening on social issues such as abortion and LGBT rights.The party elected Poots, a social and religious conservative, to replace Foster as leader. He broke with tradition by deciding not to serve as first minister.The DUP, which is rooted in the fundamentalist Free Presbyterian Church, opposed Northern Ireland’s 1998 peace accord. It later became reconciled to it and has shared power with the Irish Republican Army-linked party Sinn Fein.The British government retains an array of powers affecting Northern Ireland, but the Belfast assembly can make laws in areas including agriculture, education and health.If a new executive is formed, it is due to meet later Thursday to discuss easing coronavirus restrictions in Northern Ireland. More

Millions of people in the world’s poorest countries are at risk of “neglected tropical diseases” with tens of thousands “likely to die” as a result of the government’s multi-billion pound aid budget cut, the World Health Organisation has warned.In a stark intervention, the UN body criticised the withdrawal of “critical funding” to prevent diseases which “kill, blind, disfigure and maim, causing considerable and largely untold suffering to millions of people worldwide”.It comes amid intense pressure on Boris Johnson’s government over the decision to slash overseas aid spending from 0.7 per of gross national income to 0.5 — amounting to around £4 billion — and criticism from dozens of Conservative MPs.Former Conservative cabinet minister Andrew Mitchell, who has been leading a rebellion, has previously suggested “far more” than 100,000 avoidable deaths “will take place as a result of these terrible cuts”.The government has so far refused to give MPs a vote in the Commons on the cut, which ministers insist is a temporary measure during the economic turmoil created by the Covid-19 pandemic, but have declined to say when the budget will be restored.In a written submission to the Commons International Development Committee, which is probing the impact of the cuts, the WHO said many neglected tropical disease interventions supported by UK involved large-scale medicine distribution.The organisation said hundreds of millions of medicinal tablets used to treat the diseases will be destroyed due to the cut, with the UK previously providing “critical funding” to 19 countries under the Accelerating the Sustainable Control and Elimination of Neglected Tropical Diseases (ASCEND) programme.WHO’s submission said: “The withdrawal of UK funding makes it likely that an estimated in-country inventory of 276,802,004 tablets donated by British and international pharmaceutical companies will expire and need to be incinerated, rather than being distributed to willing recipients to prevent and eliminate disease,” they said.“No obvious alternative source of funding exists to fill the funding gaps that will be left by the exit of ASCEND.”Citing achievements of the programme, WHO said it had supported interventions to prevent the transmission of “river blindness” in 104 million people, and efforts to “aimed at permanently stopping transmission of Guinea worm”.It added: “Case finding and treatment of individuals with visceral leishmaniasis, an infectious disease acquired through the bite of infected sandflies that is fatal without timely diagnosis and specific treatments; as a consequence of the aid cuts, 20,000-30,000 individuals are likely to die, with the uncertainty in that estimate related to expected recent increase in disease incidence due to Covid-19 related programmatic delays”.The Foreign Office spokesperson said: “The seismic impact of the pandemic forced the tough decision to temporarily reduce the aid budget and exit some programmes, including the Accelerating the Sustainable Control and Elimination of Neglected Tropical Diseases programme.“We will still spend more than £10bn this year to fight poverty, tackle climate change and improve global health, including £1.3bn on global health. We will focus on the UK’s position at the forefront of the international response to Covid-19, and will continue to support programmes in countries affected by neglected tropical diseases.” More

Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle has revealed that the result of the vote on extending Covid restrictions in England was wrongly announced.It was announced on Wednesday evening that the four-week delay had been supported by 461 votes to 60, a majority of 401.But on Thursday the Speaker told MPs that there had been an embarrassing mistake in the count – revealing that an even larger majority had been in favour of the extension.Sir Lindsay explained: “I have received a report from the tellers in the aye lobby … [Conservative whip] Maria Caulfield has informed me that the number of aye votes was erroneously reported as 461, rather than 489.“I will direct the clerk to correct the numbers in the journal accordingly. The ayes were 489, the noes were 60. The ayes have it. The names were correctly recorded in Hansard.”A group of 51 Tory MPs rebelled against the government on the continued restrictions last night – but Labour backed the month-long delay “with a heavy heart”.The result of the vote means nightclubs will remain close and strict limits on numbers for sports events, theatres and cinemas will remain in place until 19 July.Several furious Tory MPs criticised Boris Johnson for the four-week delay, which he said was forced on him by surging cases of the highly contagious Delta variant.Backbencher Richard Drax accused decision-makers in government of “moving the goalposts” after making the nation feel “muzzled, acquiescent and fearful”.Former minister Tim Loughton said: “I’m done with making excuses to my constituents for when their lives might just get back to some degree of normality.” More

US and UK officials have agreed to suspend retaliatory tariffs on goods such as Scotch Whisky for five years after a long-running dispute, cabinet minister Liz Truss has announced.It comes after a marked de-escalation in the 17-year row over aerospace tariffs in March, with both countries agreeing at the time to a temporary four-month suspension of the 25 per cent duty.The new agreement, according to the Department for International Trade, agrees to “suspend retaliatory tariffs for 5 years”, in a move that was welcomed by whisky producers in the UK.In a statement on Thursday, Ms Truss, the international trade secretary, said: “This deal will support jobs across the country and is fantastic news for major employers like Scotch whisky and aerospace.“We took the decision to de-escalate the dispute at the start of the year when we became a sovereign trading nation, which was crucial to breaking the deadlock and bringing the US to the table”.“Today’s deal draws a line under an incredibly damaging issues and means we can focus on taking our trading relationship with the US to the next level,” she added.Earlier this year, the Scotch Whisky Association (SWA) described the previous 25 per cent tariff rate as “unsustainable” and highlighted data showing exports of single match Scotch whisky to the US had fallen by a third.Karen Betts, chief executive of the SWA, said: “This is very good news for Scotch whisky.“The past two years have been extremely damaging for our industry, with the loss of over £600 million in exports to the United States caused by a 25% tariff on single malt Scotch whisky imposed as a result of the long-running dispute between US and European aircraft manufacturers.”Former US president Donald Trump imposed the now suspended tariffs in 2019 in retaliation at European Union state support for the aerospace group Airbus. In response, the bloc imposed penalties of up to $4 billion on US goods and services. Other UK industries including construction vehicles and cashmere were also affected by the dispute.Under president Joe Biden’s new administration a short suspension of the tariffs was agreed with both the UK and the EU for four months.Earlier this week, the EU also reached an agreement with the US, with a deal similar to the UK to suspend retaliatory tariffs for five years, affecting items such as wine and cheese from the EU. More

Labour members are being given an opportunity to push for closer post-Brexit ties with the EU, as Keir Starmer launches a delayed overhaul of all policies.The review – to focus on better jobs, the environment, safer communities and putting “families first” – will start with a clean slate following Labour’s stumbling in May’s elections, the under-fire leader has said.The move has sparked suspicions that left-wing policies Sir Keir backed – income tax hikes on top earners, common ownership of “rail, mail, energy and water” and scrapping tuition fees – are now up for grabs.But one strand of the review, entitled “Britain in the World” will also create an opening for pro-EU members to press for Labour to end its near-silence on the post-Brexit relationship.“We will create opportunities for that. There will be events for members to get involved,” a party source said – while stressing it wanted to listen to voices outside Labour as well.Many members are frustrated with Sir Keir’s reluctance to push for additions to the skeleton Christmas trade deal, which is punishing exporters, the services sector and touring creative artists.Some want Labour to campaign to rejoin the EU customs union – or, less plausibly, the single market – even if EU membership will be a non-starter for years to come.The policy review, which Labour is calling a “roadmap”, will be a chance to steady the ship amid declining poll figures and a similar fall in Sir Keir’s leadership ratings, it hopes.A disastrous loss in the Hartlepool by-election was followed by a botched reshuffle in which the leader appeared to lose a power struggle with his deputy, Angela Rayner.The review has the title “Stronger Together: A Better Future for Britain”, with a starting point of “recognising the way Covid has changed people’s daily lives”.Its six themes are: Better jobs and better work; a green and digital future; safe and secure communities; public services that work from the start; a future where families come first; Britain in the world.Sir Keir said: “We need to build a future that everyone in Britain can be proud of. Labour did it before: creating the NHS, introducing a national minimum wage, slashing child poverty and bringing peace to Northern Ireland. Together, we can do it again.”And Anneliese Dodds, the party chair and head of the review, said: “We need to rally together to support each other, to raise each other up, not pull each other down.”Last month, Sir Keir stressed the process would move on from the 2019 manifesto, saying: “You don’t go through a review like this by picking up the last document.”Of the 10 pledges he made in early 2020, a commitment to restore free movement of citizens with the EU has already been dropped.A party source said it would be “weird” if the other pledges were not reexamined, given the extraordinary impact of the pandemic, but said the “values and mission” would remain the same. More