Markus Andrews

Ministers have not ruled out a return to localised lockdowns in response to the upsurge in the Indian variant of Covid-19 in the UK, health secretary Matt Hancock has said.Mr Hancock told Sky News’s Sophy Ridge on Sunday that he “very much hopes” that the planned national removal of England-wide restrictions will go ahead on 21 June, but said it was too early to say whether it is safe to go ahead.The health secretary said that early results from tests at Oxford University gave “a high degree of confidence” that vaccines work against the B1.617.2 strain of Covid-19.But he revealed that five people in Indian variant hotspot Bolton have ended up in hospital despite having had one jab and one – who he described as “frail” – after having two doses of vaccine. None has died.Mr Hancock said that if the variant is as much as 50 per cent more transmissible than previous strains – as some scientists fear – it could lead to “a very, very large number of cases”, even with much of the adult population vaccinated.He urged anyone who has not taken up the offer of a vaccine to do so now, warning that the Indian variant can “spread like wildfire” among unvaccinated groups. And he confirmed that jabs will to be extended to the over-35s over the coming week.Mr Hancock said the public need to be “cautious, careful and vigilant” as social and economic restrictions are rolled back.But he said it was right to go ahead with the next round of relaxations on Monday, when restaurants and pubs will reopen indoors and gatherings in private homes will be allowed to resume.The health secretary said it remained “too early to say” whether the final removal of lockdown curbs will go ahead on 21 June, telling Ridge that the decision will not be taken until a week in advance.He said ministers are not ruling out a return to regional restrictions if the Indian variant creates serious localised surges in coronavirus. Vaccination and testing programmes have already been stepped up in Bolton and Blackburn in response to a surge in cases.Mr Hancock made clear that ministers to not want to take the step of imposing local restrictions in areas like Bolton, which has remained in the highest level of controls almost the entire period since Covid-19 arrived in the UK.But he said: “We don’t rule out further action… It’s not a step we want to take, but of course we might have to take it and we will if it’s necessary to protect people.”Asked whether the 21 June relaxations may have to be delayed, Mr Hancock said: “I very much hope not.“Our strategy remains on track. It is just that in the race between the vaccine and the variants, the variant has got more legs. That makes it more challenging but the overall strategy remains on track.”A member of the government’s Sage scientific advisory group said ministers must be ready to reverse Monday’s relaxations if there is evidence of a rise in cases.“I think we have to monitor this very carefully, I don’t think we should rule anything out,” Professor John Edmunds told BBC1’s Andrew Marr Show. “So if things look like they’re getting worse rapidly then I do think that action needs to be taken.”Prof Edmunds added: “I think we should be concerned but not panicking. We’re in a much, much better place now than we were when the Kent variant first hit us back in November, December.”Mr Hancock said there is “new very early data” from Oxford University giving confidence that existing vaccines work against the variant.“That means that we can stay on course with our strategy of using the vaccine to deal with the pandemic and opening up carefully and cautiously but we do need to be really very vigilant to the spread of the disease,” said the health secretary.“We have a high degree of confidence that the vaccine will overcome.”The university said the data is preliminary and was unable to share the research because it was not yet written up in a manuscript.Government scientific adviser Professor Sir Mark Walport warned the pandemic is at a “perilous moment” and it will be “extremely important” to keep an eye on the numbers over the next few weeks.“The problem is that the data takes some while to emerge, which is why there’s every grounds to be very cautious about the ability to open up in June,” said Prof Walport, a Sage member and former chief scientific adviser.“It is a perilous moment. We have a variant that shows good evidence of being more transmissible and possibly significantly more transmissible.”He said that “complete normality” will “take a bit of time to return”, as he urged people to exercise caution.“My advice is that just because you can do something doesn’t necessarily mean you should,” Sir Mark told Ridge.“As far as possible socialise outside, maintain social distancing, if you’re going to hug, hug cautiously.”The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) could reconsider its recommendation that under-40s should be offered an alternative to AstraZeneca jabs, in the light of the new more infectious variant, a member of the group has said.Professor Adam Finn, of the University of Bristol, told Ridge: “That’s on the agenda, and if necessary that’s something that could be done.“When we expressed a preference for non-AstraZeneca vaccines for this age group it was done in a very provisional way on the basis of everything going absolutely right.“And if the evidence shows that the risk/benefit balance for people in their 30s is to be offered that vaccine then absolutely that recommendation will be changed.“At the moment we don’t think that’s necessary, but it could well become a recommendation in the future.”The recommendation to offer under-40s a different vaccine was made on the basis that the very low risk of this age-group developing serious illness or dying from Covid-19 made it preferable for them to avoid the risk – also very low – of dangerous blood clots linked to the AZ jab.However, the decision will inevitably slow down the rollout of the vaccine as more of the younger age groups are called forward to receive their jabs. 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Tough restrictions on international travel should remain in place this summer because of the danger from Covid-19 variants in countries around the world, a senior parliamentarian has warned.The chair of the House of Commons home affairs committee, Yvette Cooper, said the government should be taking “a much stronger and cautionary approach” to borders to prevent the arrival of new variants in the UK.Ministers have already announced a “green list” of 12 countries – including Australia, Israel and Portugal – which will not require quarantine for arrivals in England from Monday, and more are expected to be added by the summer holiday season.But Ms Cooper told BBC1’s Andrew Marr Show: “The government needs to slow down its plans. I don’t understand why it’s lifting some of its international travel restrictions tomorrow. I think they should be being much more cautious about that.”The senior Labour backbencher said she would favour a South Korean system involving a much stronger system of home quarantine than in the UK, alongside hotel quarantine for travellers from the most high-risk countries.But asked if it was safe for travel to be opened up further this summer, Ms Cooper said: “Most people want to be able to hug their relatives, they want to be able to go out, the kids stay in school, to be able to go out to the pub.“If the price of that is having stronger restrictions at our border, I think most people would say that is the right thing to do for this summer.” More

Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham has said Labour would not have lost so many seats in its traditional northern heartlands if he had defeated Jeremy Corbyn in the party’s 2015 leadership election.The former Labour leadership candidate made the claim during an interview with The Observer, in which he admitted that he would run for the leadership again after the next election if he had enough support.Mr Burnham unsuccessfully ran twice to be Labour leader in 2010 and 2015 before becoming the first elected mayor of Greater Manchester.He told The Observer that he believed he would have been more successful than Mr Corbyn in stopping the Conservatives from breaking the so-called “red wall” of northern seats lost in the 2019 general election.“I still think life would have been different if I had won,” Mr Burnham, who won a landslide victory in his second mayoral election earlier this month, said.“I think we would be stronger in taking on the government. I don’t think we’d have lost as many northern seats had I won.”In recent years, Labour has struggled to hold on to northern seats that it used to win easily and the party suffered a devastating defeat in this month’s Hartlepool by-election, prompting concerns about Sir Keir Starmer’s leadership of the party.In his interview, Mr Burnham was also deeply critical over what he believed was Labour’s failure to take a strong stance on major policy issues, such as social care reform, and said he was unconvinced that the party was still able to implement radical change.“The Labour Party created the NHS post-war,” he said. “I ask myself, could the Labour Party that I’ve been associated with in the 20 years that I’ve been in elected politics … could it create the NHS? “And no, is the only thing I could say, because it hasn’t seemingly got that wherewithal any more to take on a big injustice.”His comments came as an Opinium poll published by the newspaper showed Mr Burnham was widely-seen as the most likely and able successor to Sir Keir as Labour leader.Some 47 per cent of respondents put him as their top choice, ahead of 35 per cent for London mayor Sadiq Khan and 29 per cent for Leeds Central MP Hilary Benn.Earlier this month, the Greater Manchester mayor criticised Sir Keir for being “too cautious” in his leadership and warned that the party needed to be stronger on issues such as pay for nurses and social care staff.However, Mr Burnham said he would not challenge for the leadership before the next election or “any time soon”, despite his concerns about the party’s failure to put forward a sufficiently bold policy platform for this year’s local and devolved elections.“If there comes a point where it is clear to me that the Labour Party, having not thought me right twice, suddenly thinks ‘well actually you probably are now, because of the way the world has changed’, then as I say, I will put myself forward to lead the Labour Party,” he added. More

Boris Johnson’s Conservatives have taken a 13-point lead over Labour, as a new poll recorded Keir Starmer’s popularity slumping amid the party’s hangover following its defeat in the Hartlepool by-election. The margin is the widest recorded by Opinium since May last year, soon after Starmer took over from Jeremy Corbyn as leader.The poll found that one-third (33 per cent) of 2019 Labour voters want Starmer to resign, compared to 49 per cent who do not.The survey of 2,004 British adults, conducted on 13 and 14 May, found 44 per cent planning to vote Conservative – up two points since a similar poll a fortnight ago. Meanwhile Labour dropped six points to 31 per cent, meaning an overall increase of eight points in the Tory lead in just two weeks.After almost drawing level with Johnson in Opinium’s last poll at the end of April, Sir Keir fell six points to just 23 per cent when respondents were asked who would be best as prime minister, while the Tory leader put on eight points to establish a 17-point lead over Starmer, scoring 40 per cent.The government’s handling of the coronavirus received its highest approval rating since the middle of 2020.Some 67 per cent of those questioned said Labour had done badly in the 6 May elections, when Starmer’s party shed 327 councillors in England and saw the Westminster seat of Hartlepool fall into Tory hands for the first time since the 1960s. Among those who said the party had done badly, almost one-third (31 per cent) said the leader was to blame.However, a majority of the public (57 per cent) said Starmer had been a better leader than his predecessor Jeremy Corbyn, against 23 per cent who thought Corbyn had performed better.Sir Keir’s satisfaction ratings took a huge knock, with his net approval – calculated by deducting those dissatisfied from those who said they were satisfied with his performance – plunging from plus eight to minus 11, driven by a 30-point drop in ratings among 2019 Labour voters, from plus 40 to plus 10.Only 29 per cent of voters said Starmer looks like a prime minister in waiting, but the figures rose to 48 per cent among 2019 Labour voters.Most popular choice as a replacement was Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham, with almost half of those questioned (47 per cent) thinking he would be a good leader, against 19 per cent who thought he would be bad.Opinium’s head of political polling Adam Drummond said: “Keir Starmer’s ratings have taken a tumble as Labour voters begin to fear that he isn’t the one to lead the party back to power.“The Labour leader has taken a significant fall across all metrics in the last two weeks, particularly on being a strong leader, looking like a prime minister in waiting, and being able to get things done.“Any opposition would be struggling against a government riding the success of the vaccine rollout, and the last time the government’s approval figures for the pandemic were this positive the Conservatives held a 17-point lead. However, at least then Labour could console themselves that their leader was new and making a positive impression.“Labour’s poor position today is the result of factors both out of their control and things they should be deeply concerned with.”Opinium Research carried out an online survey of 2,004 UK adults from 13-14 May More

Emergency warnings will be sent automatically to people at risk from floods, fires and terror attacks, under a hi-tech scheme announced by the government today.Under the emergency alert system, 4G and 5G mobile network operator technology will be used to send SMS text messages to all phones in the vicinity of the scene of an incident causing risk to life.The messages will give details of the nature and location of the emergency as well as instructions on how to respond and a link to a government website where phone users can verify the alert and get more information.The system is based on the use of text messages during the coronavirus pandemic to urge Britons to stay home to protect the NHS and save lives.Messages will be received within 10 seconds of transmission by all mobile phones in a defined area, as well as those entering the area later.After trials starting in east Suffolk on 25 May, it is intended that the service will be rolled out across the country after the summer, to warn of incidents including public health emergencies,  severe floods, fires, industrial accidents and terror attacks.Similar alerts have already been adopted by countries including the USA, Netherlands, Canada, South Korea,  Japan and New Zealand, where they have been widely credited with saving lives during earthquakes.Paymaster general Penny Mordaunt said the service will be “a vital tool in helping us to better respond to emergencies, both nationally and locally”.She added: “This new system builds on existing capability and will allow us to more quickly and effectively get life-saving messages to people across the UK.”By broadcasting from cell towers in the vicinity of an emergency, the alerts are secure, free to receive, and one-way, said government officials. They do not reveal phone users’ location and do not collect any personal data, and can be sent only by authorised governmental and emergency services users.The messages will trigger a distinctive notification, using a loud tone and vibration that is designed to convey urgency and is said to be hard for users to ignore.People who receive a test alert over the coming weeks will not need to do anything, as any messages sent before the nationwide launch will just be tests to ensure the effectiveness of the service. More

The government will this week unveil plans to treble tree-planting rates in England by the end of this parliament.The initiative is part of a an effort to demonstrate commitment to restoring the national environment ahead of the United Nations COP26 conference being hosted by the UK in Glasgow in November.Setting out plans in a speech on Tuesday, the environment secretary, George Eustice, will point to February’s Dasgupta Review, which set out the role of biodiversity in economic growth.He is expected to say: “We are putting plans in place to treble woodland creation rates by the end of this parliament, reflecting England’s contribution to meeting the UK’s overall target of planting 30,000 hectares per year by the end of this parliament.“We will make sure that the right trees are planted in the right places and that more green jobs are created in the forestry sector.”Looking back over the coronavirus pandemic of the past year, Mr Eustice will say: “The events of the last 12 months have led people to appreciate the difference that nature makes to our lives more than ever before.“There is an increased awareness of the link between our own health, and economic prosperity, and that of the planet – as highlighted by the recent Dasgupta Review of the economics of biodiversity.”In a speech outlining the government’s ambitions to create more woodlands, protect peatlands and boost biodiversity, Mr Eustice will say that increased tree-planting will form a central pillar in the UK’s efforts to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050.Under the new target, approximately 7,000 hectares of woodlands will be planted per year by May 2024, alongside new initiatives to improve the health of our trees, create more woodlands in cities, and deliver thousands of green jobs.An England Trees Action Plan will set out the ambition of continuing current planting trends for woodlands made up of mostly native broadleaf trees. More

To the already long list of harmful impacts of Brexit on the UK, it appears that we may have to add the arrival of the Indian coronavirus variant in the UK.Although the link may initially seem far-fetched, there’s a roundabout way in which withdrawal from the European Union may be said to have helped usher the B1.617.2 variant into Britain.The roots of the issue lie in trade, and in Boris Johnson’s desperate need to find a substitute for the lost EU exports sacrificed on the altar of Brexit. More

Boris Johnson is facing demands to explain whether he delayed the addition of India to the government’s travel “red list” in April because he was hoping his high-profile visit to the country could go ahead.Travellers from India have been blamed for bringing the highly infectious B1.617.2 strain of Covid-19 to the UK, sparking the current surge in cases in towns like Bolton, Blackburn and Bedford.India was placed on the red list – requiring arrivals to quarantine in airport hotels – on 19 April. But the control did not come into effect until 23 April, triggering a rush by thousands of passengers to get in before the deadline. And questions were asked today about why the country did not join the list on 2 April along with neighbours Pakistan and Bangladesh, where infection rates were lower.On 2 April, recorded infections in India were running at about 90,000 a day – or one in every 15,000 of the population – compared to 4,700 in Pakistan (about one in 45,000) and 6,800 in Bangladesh (around one in 24,000).Health minister Edward Argar said it was impossible to know how many travellers from India in April were infected with the mutant strain, and admitted it was possible that some of them had used public transport to travel from airports to the 10-day quarantine at home required when the country was on the amber list.By the time India was placed on the red list, the country was approaching 300,000 cases a day as the world’s worst coronavirus hotspot.But it was not until 19 April that Mr Johnson cancelled a trip, scheduled for the following weekend, to meet PM Narendra Modi in New Delhi, one of the cities worst-hit by the virus. The visit, already postponed once earlier in the year, would have been Mr Johnson’s first major bilateral overseas visit since becoming prime minister and a crucial part of his post-Brexit “global Britain” drive to establish new trade links with other parts of the world.Labour’s shadow home secretary Nick Thomas-Symonds demanded to know whether Mr Johnson put off imposing tighter controls on travel from India because he was hoping, even as the situation in the country deteriorated, that his own trip could go ahead.“Time and again the UK government have put the safety of the British people at risk by doing too little too late during the Covid pandemic,” Mr Thomas-Symonds told The Independent.“The PM has serious questions to answer about suggestions that he delayed adding India to the red list until he decided to cancel a scheduled trade visit to India, and that he did not put the safety of the British people first.“Moving so slowly to add India to the red list has meant that dangerous variants have reached us as a result. The Conservative government must accept the responsibility for this.“Other countries have acted swiftly to protect their borders against Covid and emerging strains. That’s why Labour has long called for the introduction of a comprehensive hotel quarantine system.”When health secretary Matt Hancock first announced India was going on the red list, he was challenged over the delay in the House of Commons by home affairs committee chair Yvette Cooper, who told him: “This week, Hong Kong identified 47 covid cases on a single Delhi flight. Before Friday, we still had 16 direct flights from India and many more indirect ones.”Evidence from Public Health England shows that between 2 and 23 April, cases of the Indian variant were detected in people who had travelled to the UK from variant hotspots Delhi and Mumbai, with the sharpest rises after 19 April, as demand for India-UK flights went through the roof. The first cases of domestic transmission of the strain were also detected in this time.The chair of the all-party parliamentary group on coronavirus, Layla Moran, said: “Boris Johnson must take responsibility for the failure to prevent the Indian variant taking root in the UK. Once again the government acted too late, and the country is sadly paying the price.”The Liberal Democrat MP told The Independent: “If they’re going to announce an area with variants of concern is going on the red list, it needs to be immediate. And they shouldn’t be waiting a number of weeks after a variant of concern is found to put that country on the red list at all.“The blame for the surge in the Indian variant lies at the door of Boris Johnson.”And Ms Cooper, said: “The Government was warned about the India variant – cases had been rapidly rising there since February – but inexplicably delayed putting India on the red list until 23 April, after many thousands of people had returned from India bringing in many hundreds of new variant cases.“When they did finally add India to the red list – two weeks after they’d added Pakistan on 9 April – they gave travellers four days’ notice to rush back. Why didn’t they introduce additional testing for those travellers before they were able to get on public transport home?”Mr Argar said the decision not to place India on the red list at the start of April was made “on the basis of the evidence”.Factors taken into consideration included not only infection rates and the emergence of new variants, but also the country’s capacity to carry out genomic sequencing, where India is strong.“On the basis of the advice at the time, the decision was taken to Pakistan and Bangladesh on the red list at a particular point, and India on that list subsequently,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.Mr Argar insisted the UK’s border restrictions are “among the strictest and the toughest in the world”.Evidence suggests that the “overwhelming majority” of arrivals from amber list countries comply with home quarantine requirements, he said.There was no “hard and fast answer” on how many people arriving from India during April were infected with the variant, said Mr Argar.“One person could bring in a variant, and that could transmit quickly,” he said. “It is impossible to completely hermetically seal the borders of a country.“I do think we’ve got the right border controls in place to do everything we can to minimise – you can never totally eliminate it – but to minimise the risks.”A government spokesperson said: “We have some of the toughest border measures in the world.“We took precautionary action to ban travel from India on 23 April, six days before this variant was put under investigation and two weeks before it was labelled as of concern. We have since sped up our vaccination programme and put in enhanced local support to curb transmission.“Prior to India being placed on the red list in April anyone coming to the UK had to test negative and quarantine for 10 days.” More