Markus Andrews

Eleven pandemic exercises were conducted between 2015 and 2019, the government has revealed – but it is refusing to release the results on national security grounds.Health secretary Matt Hancock has been accused of “covering up secret reports” during the Covid-19 outbreak.The trials included Exercise Alice, which in 2016 tested the UK’s readiness to cope with Middle East Respiratory syndrome (Mers), another type of coronavirus.Until now, the government has admitted only to having run Operation Cygnus, also in 2016, which over three days simulated a flu pandemic.The exercises came to light after a doctor campaigned for transparency on how well the government had prepared the NHS for a pandemic.Moosa Qureshi submitted a request under Freedom of Information law asking for information about any pandemic operations.His request was rejected on grounds of national security, so he asked for an internal review.Now Public Health England (PHE) has told him the national security exemption is no longer applicable.The pandemic exercises that have been disclosed also include three on dealing with an outbreak of Ebola, three on a flu pandemic, two on coping with lassa, a viral haemorrhagic fever, and two on bird flu.PHE is refusing to release the results of the tests, saying to do so would damage national security.Dr Qureshi, a hospital consultant, said: “The health secretary told parliament that Exercise Cygnus looked at UK preparedness for a flu pandemic – not other pandemics – but the truth is that he’s covering up multiple secret reports on preparedness for other pandemics, including a coronavirus pandemic.”Pandemic preparedness is improved by transparency and public scrutiny, he said.“We’re facing a third pandemic wave and there will be future pandemics. Let’s stop playing politics and get scientific with this.”Last month former No 10 adviser Dominic Cummings  claimed that government “secrecy” in the Covid crisis “contributed greatly to the catastrophe”. The Independent has asked the Department for Health and Social Care to respond. More

Theresa May has lashed out at the government’s Covid travel policy, saying the UK is “no further forward” one year after the pandemic hit — despite more than half of UK adults receiving two doses of a vaccine.The former prime minister suggested Britain is beginning to fall behind Europe in reopening its borders to travellers. She said the UK is sending a message to the rest of the world that “global Britain is shut for business”.Ms May’s comments in a debate on the aviation industry in the House of Commons on Thursday came as an expert warned quarantine-free travel to the UK from mainland Europe or the US will not be permitted before late July.Paul Charles, chief executive of travel consultancy The PC Agency, said the reopening of travel had been “sacrificed by ministers watching their backs”.Elsewhere, British Airways announced it had furloughed thousands of its staff, citing delays to travel as the reason behind its decision.The airline confirmed on Thursday that a large number of its workers – including management staff – have been put back onto the scheme.The UK is currently operating a travel “traffic light” system in which countries are placed in green, amber or red categories depending, ministers claim, on how quickly the virus is spread through the respective populations.Anyone arriving in the UK from amber or red list country must self-isolate.Ms May said: “One year on we are no further forward, indeed what we have is a devastated industry, jobs lost and global Britain shut for business. More than not being any further forward, we’ve gone backwards.”She added: “We now have over 50 per cent of the adult population vaccinated – a wonderful programme – yet we’re more restricted on travel than we were last year.”Ms May also said that the government needed to be “upfront” with the British public that the virus is unlikely to ever be fully eradicated and that restrictions can’t go on forever. If ministers block travel every time there is a new variant people might “never be able to travel abroad ever again”, she added.Boris Johnson is due to give an update on the last stage of England’s lockdown easing on Monday, taking effect from 21 June.That date, dubbed “freedom day” by some, is supposed to see most restrictions – including travel – removed. But there are fears the changes will be pushed back over rising cases of the Delta variant. More

England footballers ‘taking the knee’ is “divisive” and fans who boo it “would like to end racism as well,” a government minister has said.Education minister Gillian Keegan told BBC Question Time that the gesture is “symbolism more than action”.Players were met with boos by some fans when performing the gesture before last week’s friendly matches against Austria and Romania.England manager Gareth Southgate has said the players will continue to make the gesture in future matches.The Conservative MP for Chichester said “people have to make their own decisions” when deciding whether to take the knee or not.”Actually what we’ve ended up with, whether it’s for statues, whether it’s the Queen’s picture, whether it’s taking the knee, we’ve ended up with these things being things that kind of divide us and actually, united societies are what solve these big issues,” she told the virtual audience.She added: “It’s not my judgment to say whether they should take the knee or not. They’re perfectly free to do what they want. If you want to say, do I think it’s symbolism more than action? Of course it is … but we’ve seen it’s creating division.”And by the way, the people who are booing, I’m pretty sure most of them would like to end racism as well. They disagree. There’s a lot of things that have been, you know, there’s different things that people are interpreting.”There are some Conservative MPs (that) are very much against it, why? Because Black Lives Matter stands for things that they don’t stand for. It’s really about defunding the police and the overthrow of capitalism, which is, you know, Black Lives Matter the actual political organisation.”And some people will take it and think that’s supporting Black Lives Matter. I’m sure Black Lives Matter will think it’s supporting them.”Anti-discrimination group Kick It Out says the gesture is “in no way linked to any political organisation.” More

The chief executive of the RSPCA has sounded the alarm over the prospect of post-Brexit free-trade deals with countries where farm animals are treated in ways that would be illegal in the UK.Animal welfare standards will be “watered down by the back door” and UK farmers will be undercut if the government signs agreements with other nations where farm animals are made to suffer needlessly, Chris Sherwood warned.Animal organisations fear that Britain’s forthcoming deal with Australia could set a precedent for similar arrangements around the world that would lead to increased cruelty.The government wants deals with New Zealand, Canada, Mexico, India and the US, and is on course to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership alliance, which includes parts of Asia and Japan.The Conservatives’ manifesto promised not to compromise on environmental protection and animal welfare standards, but the Australia deal prompted a “furious” row in government over its approach. The experts believe the UK could sign up to import meat from pigs held in farrowing crates for long periods, beef from hormone-fed cattle, chickens crammed into overcrowded, barren cages, and milk from genetically modified cows, among other goods.Mr Sherwood told The Independent the Australia deal could set a “very concerning” precedent.“Countries like Brazil have big exports of pork and beef, and our concern is animal welfare standards will be watered down by the back door and will undercut our farmers,” he said.“It’s incongruent with the great messages from the government on animal welfare – we’ve just had the Kept Animals Bill and Animal Sentience Bill, and a commitment in the Queen’s Speech to protect standards.“The government is on record as saying they want to protect and enhance animal welfare, and all we’re doing is reminding them of that.“It’s not just the RSPCA – the public care about where animals come from and how they’re treated. These are sentient beings – animals that have feelings and feel pain.”Many other countries allow pigs to be kept in sow stalls and farrowing crates – pens that are so tight the animal cannot even turn around – and chickens to be more tightly crammed into sheds.Britain banned sow stalls in 1999, and farrowing crates are legal but controversial.Canada and the US still have battery cages for egg-laying hens, which are considered so cruel the UK banned them in 2012.India, which is thought to want to export liquid and dried eggs to the UK, keeps its entire national flock of egg-laying hens in battery cages.The government is deeply split between factions such as trade secretary Liz Truss who is believed to want to negotiate as many deals as possible and ex-environment secretary Michael Gove, who favours doing deals only if UK animal-welfare standards are not compromised.“The difficulty the government has is it doesn’t have a trade policy,” said David Bowles, head of public affairs at the RSPCA. “They need a trade policy so that not only do they show other countries before negotiations what their red lines are, but also to convince the public and business and farmers they’re not selling out those standards.“Although they have a manifesto commitment not to undermine animal-welfare standards, they do not yet have a process of showing how they will achieve that, nor a trade strategy that says what is their purpose on trade – is it as many as possible and hope for the best or just high-quality agreements and ensure they don’t undermine our standards.”“Certain MPs say we have a free-trade agreement with the EU so why can’t we have one with other countries, but the vital fact they’re missing is that we have equivalent standards on animal welfare to the EU brought up over the past 47 years. But every country we’re doing deals with has lower standards than ours.”The Trade and Animal Welfare Coalition, part of the Eurogroup for Animals alliance, said it feared an Australia deal would “set the template forfuture agreements, whether for New Zealand, India, Mercosur [Latin America], the wider Trans-Pacific Partnership or the US”, adding that the UK should not “outsource” lower welfare production. When asked to respond, a government spokesperson gave only the wording that was in the Conservative manifesto: “In all of our trade negotiations, we will not compromise on our high environmental protection, animal welfare and food standards.” More

World leaders including Joe Biden, Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel have been invited to a barbecue on the beach with Boris Johnson during their stay in Cornwall for the G7 summit.The leaders – more used to fine dining and banquets on their trips abroad – will be served local delicacies on the sands of Carbis Bay on Saturday by chef Simon Stallard of the Hidden Hut, whose regular gig is in a takeaway shack on the beach at nearby Portscatho.On the menu are scallops, Curgurrell crab claws and Portscatho mackerel, followed by seared and smokey Moorland sirloin beef, Newlyn lobster and scorched leeks served with sides of layered Cornish potato chips, St Just purple sprouting broccoli and salt-baked beetroot.After a dessert of beach hut sundae, the leaders will be offered baked Brie, hot buttered rum and toasted marshmallows around firepits on the beach.Local beers and Cornish sparkling wine and a “hedgerow fizz” cocktail will be served alongside German and Australian wines.Like any barbie hosts, Mr Johnson and wife Carrie will be anxiously scanning the skies for signs of rain, after bad weather scuppered a planned trip to St Michael’s Mount on Thursday. Latest forecasts suggest they can hope for a balmy evening in Cornwall on Saturday.On Friday night they will enjoy more conventional culinary treats in the spectacular setting of the Eden Project, with fine dining using local ingredients cooked by chef Emily Scott from Newquay’s Watergate Bay Hotel.The leaders will have a reception with the Queen, the Prince of Wales and the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge ahead of their dinner, and will discuss sustainability with Prince Charles. But the monarch will depart before the G7 delegations sit down to eat.After a starter of spiced melon gazpacho, the world leaders will eat turbot roasted on the bone, caught off the Cornish coast by a fisherman from Newquay, with Cornish new potatoes and wild garlic pesto, with a side of greens from a Padstow kitchen garden.The cheese board will be made up of Cornish-produced gouda, yarg and Helford blue and will be followed by a strawberry pavlova dessert.A final west country flavour will be delivered in the form of petit fours of clotted-cream fudge and a mini clotted-cream ice cream cone with chocolate Earl Grey truffles. More

The UK will donate 30 million “surplus” vaccine doses to poorer countries by the end of the year – including five million by September – after criticism it was dragging its heels.Opening the G7 summit in Cornwall, Boris Johnson will also pledge to release at least a further 70 million jabs within the next year, as he seeks to display global leadership on the issue.And, after fears that the donation would count as part of the foreign aid budget – which is being slashed by £4bn this year – it will be “in addition to” the shrunken £10bn aid pot.The move comes after the World Health Organisation and other global bodies pleaded with rich nations to act, to prevent dangerous new Covid variants setting back progress to end the pandemic.In an eve-of-summit announcement, US president Joe Biden pledged to buy and donate an additional 500 million doses of Pfizer vaccine to distribute to the world’s poorest countries over the next year.Mr Johnson said the initial 5 million gift – to help countries struggling the most – could be done without delaying completion of the UK’s programme to give at least one jab to every adult by the end of July.“As a result of the success of the UK’s vaccine programme we are now in a position to share some of our surplus doses with those who need them,” he said.The UK, with a 500 million-strong stockpile, would also ensure it had sufficient doses for autumn booster jabs, if needed, and to respond to any new strains of the virus.In Cornwall, G7 leaders are expected to announce they will provide at least 1 billion vaccine doses and set out a plan to expand manufacturing, as well as measures to prevent future pandemics.But they are under pressure to meet more of the bill, with 200 former world leaders and ministers, including Gordon Brown and Tony Blair, calling for two-thirds of the £46.6bn cost of vaccinating developing countries to be paid.Meanwhile, there is a divide over waiving intellectual property rights for vaccines, backed by Mr Biden but not by the UK or most EU leaders.Ahead of talks on financing, Mr Johnson will announce that 80 per cent of the UK’s 100 million doses will be distributed through Covax, the world aid programme, and the remainder directly to countries in need.They will be a mix of Oxford-AstraZeneca, Pfizer-BioNTech, Janssen, Moderna and other makes, based on the UK’s supply and requirements at the time.White House officials said the first US jabs would be shipped through the global Covax alliance in August to 92 lower-income countries and the African Union, with the goal of distributing 200m by the end of this year and the remainder in the first half of 2022.Speaking after talks with Mr Johnson in Cornwall, Mr Biden said he expected further pledges to be made by G7 countries on Friday.“The United States is providing these half billion doses with no strings attached,” said the US president. “Our vaccine donations don’t include pressure for favours, or potential concessions. We’re doing this to save lives.”Biden vowed that America would be the “arsenal of vaccines” in the fight against Covid-19 in the same way that its munitions factories were “the arsenal of democracy during World War Two”.The UK has argued it has shown global leadership, by funding the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine and making it available at cost – rather than at a much higher price, with huge profits made.Mr Johnson added: “Over a year ago, we funded the development of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine on the basis it would be distributed at cost to the world.“This unprecedented model, which puts people squarely above profit, means over half a billion doses have been administered in 160 countries so far.” More

In his four-hour long evidence session to MPs, the greatest compliment that can be paid to Matt Hancock is that he survived, he did not add to his own considerable difficulties, and his political career may not, after all, be over. You see, in the world of Hancock, it’s China’s fault. As a novel excuse he thus neatly plays into the current Sinophobia and increasingly credible suggestions that the new coronavirus escaped from a laboratory in Wuhan. In any event, the Chinese failed to close their borders and alert the world. This is but the latest mutation of a clever stratagem developed by the secretary of state for health and social care in recent months – to spread the blame for failings on Covid across as many possible suspects as possible, as if it were a game of Cluedo. The list of suspects is long, and pinning guilt on any of them tricky.In the past he has suggested that it was the public’s fault, because they disregarded lockdown rules, which were, of course, all perfectly clear and logical: “what matters is, yes of course, the rules that we put in place, but it is also about how people act” Hancock declared in January about the shortcomings in the tier system. Hancock also has the permanent all-purpose alibi that he was “following the science”, which is another way of blaming the experts for offering duff opinions. Plus, of course, there is the undeniable fact that the pandemic was “unprecedented” and therefore could not have been prepared for (despite evidence of planning that had taken place). The shortages of protective equipment and testing (and thus the care home scandal) can be explained away in that way. The plea that he and his department have been working incredibly hard has found some sympathy among non-partisan members of the public, though many would still be happy to see him fired immediately. For now, he remains insulation for Boris Johnson. More

Emmanuel Macron has launched an angry attack on the UK’s failure to implement the Brexit deal for Northern Ireland, wrecking Boris Johnson’s attempts to claim there is “harmony” at the G7 summit.The French president branded the prime minister’s attempt to reopen the legal protocol governing trade across the Irish Sea as “not serious”, saying: “Nothing is renegotiable.”The attack – ahead of a face-to-face meeting with Mr Johnson in Cornwall – came after the US issued the UK with an extraordinary diplomatic rebuke for putting the Northern Ireland peace process in jeopardy.Joe Biden’s top diplomat in London warned David Frost, the Brexit minister, that the government is “inflaming” tensions by refusing to introduce checks at ports, revealed in a memo which No 10 did not deny.At the G7, Mr Johnson and Mr Biden held talks for one hour and 20 minutes and emerged, Downing Street claimed, “in complete harmony” on the Northern Ireland controversy.But the tensions exploded immediately afterwards, at Mr Macron’s press conference in Paris and ahead of a showdown between the prime minister and the European Commission on Friday.The UK has hinted it will unilaterally shelve an agreed ban on chilled meat exports from Britain to Northern Ireland, due to kick in at the end of June – having delayed earlier promised checks on goods.The French president said: “I think it is not serious to want to revisit, in the month of July, what we finalised after years of work on [in] December.“We have a protocol, an agreement of separation in the framework of which is Northern Ireland and a trade treaty.“If after six months you say we cannot respect what was negotiated, then that says nothing can be respected. I believe in the power of treaties. I believe in seriousness. Nothing is renegotiable. Everything is applicable.”Brussels is ready to slap tariffs and quotas on UK exports, unless it backs down – and even to “suspend” other parts of the Brexit trade deal, possibly hitting fishing and even power supplies.Mr Biden’s primary concern is preserving peace in Ireland, prompting the apparent issuing of the “demarche”, a formal diplomatic reprimand almost unprecedented between close allies.The government memo, revealed by The Times, said the US had “strongly urged” Britain to reach a settlement, even accepting “unpopular compromises” to end the stalemate.It stated that Yael Lempert, chargé d’affaires at the US embassy in London, had “implied that the UK had been inflaming the rhetoric, by asking if we would keep it ‘cool’”.In Cornwall, Mr Biden avoided a direct confrontation, No 10 insisting he had not raised concerns about the Northern Ireland Protocol as the two leaders stressed their shared “commitment to the Good Friday Agreement”.They were in “in complete harmony on this issue”, Mr Johnson’s spokesman said. However, he did not deny the demarche, saying: “I wouldn’t get into the details of the discussions countries have.”On Mr Macron’s attack, the spokesman claimed: “We are absolutely acting in accord with what was achieved and what was set out [in the Protocol].”Mr Johnson described the president as a “breath of fresh air” after the meeting, while Mr Biden stressed the UK-US “special relationship” – a term the prime minister is believed to dislike as “needy”.The two leaders signed a new Atlantic Charter, reviving the close ties of their wartime predecessors Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt.They also agreed “to work to reopen travel”, but the rumoured announcement of a UK-US travel corridor – to spare vaccinated visitors the need to quarantine – still appears some way off.Likewise, although they reaffirmed their desire for a post-Brexit free trade deal, there is no sign of negotiations starting. “I don’t have specific date for further talks,” Mr Johnson’s spokesman admitted.An exchange of gifts saw the prime minister present the president with a framed photograph of the anti-slavery campaigner and former slave Frederick Douglass.First Lady Jill Biden was given a first edition of Daphne du Maurier’s The Apple Tree, to reflect the author’s Cornish links, Downing Street said.In return, Mr Johnson was given a US-made bike and helmet, while his new wife Carrie received a leather tote bag made by military wives and a presidential silk scarf. More