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Boots staff who volunteered to take on potentially dangerous roles at government coronavirus testing sites for the high-street giant have lost their jobs. Boots employees have been helping to operate official drive-in centres across the UK since March. But since then the company has announced plans to cut more than 4,000 jobs and close almost 50 of its Boots Opticians stores. Some of those who signed up to work on the front line against the pandemic are among those who have been made redundant. Boots said it would have been wrong to give those who had signed up to work in the government’s testing scheme special treatment in the redundancy process.But the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers (Usdaw) said staff and their families “deserved better”.The row is not the first time that the role of Boots in the testing programme has proved controversial. Inside Politics newsletterThe latest news on Brexit, politics and beyond direct to your inbox every weekdayInside Politics newsletterThe latest news on Brexit, politics and beyond direct to your inbox every weekdayIn May there was an outcry when the company advertised for hundreds of unpaid volunteers across the UK to sign up to work 32 hours a week taking throat and nose swabs. Those who applied were told they would be given personal protective equipment (PPE) in line with NHS standards.But they were also warned to consider the health of their own families before signing up for the roles.At the time the company said that a total of 1,000 people were needed, to be made up of a combination of the volunteers and existing Boots staff.But the adverts were pulled days after they were highlighted by The Independent.Since then, long-term Boots staff – who are paid, unlike the planned “volunteers” – have continued to work at testing sites across the country, however. Daniel Adams, national officer for Usdaw, said: “This is deeply distressing news for Boots staff and their families; they deserve better. Our high streets desperately need the government to develop a sector-specific recovery plan to get a grip of this crisis.”Andy McDonald, a member of Keir Starmer’s shadow cabinet who speaks for Labour on employment rights, said: “The government’s failure to provide certainty and security for businesses and key workers throughout the pandemic is shameful. It is grossly unfair and indicative of the government’s treatment of key workers that those who went above and beyond in the national effort against the virus are now suffering redundancy during an economic crisis.”A spokesperson for Boots said: “In July 2020 we announced a restructuring programme to ensure the long-term and sustainable future of our business. We know that this was a difficult time for colleagues who were impacted; making redundancies is never an easy decision. Throughout the consultation we ensured that the process was fair and proper, and that we treated everyone with the dignity, care and respect they deserved. Not all colleagues were able to be a part of the government’s testing scheme and to single them out would have been unfair.” More

Patel: BLM protests ‘dreadful’ and taking the knee ‘wrong’Disruption to trade caused by Brexit represents the first signs of structural issues which will cut UK GDP for years to come, senior economists have told The Independent – while warning it can no longer be dismissed as “teething problems”.The experts said they could see nothing from the first six weeks of 2021 to persuade them to amend forecasts of tens of billions of pounds of damage to the economy over the coming years, though hard figures on the cost of quitting the single market and customs union will not emerge for a few months.Current analysis by the EU predicts Britain’s divorce from the bloc will cause a 2.25 per cent hit to the UK economy by 2022 – £40bn in lost growth over two years.It comes as Westminster has been urged to support Scotland’s struggling whisky industry after “complicated bureaucracy post-Brexit” caused overseas exports to drop by 23 per cent.In an open letter to rural affairs secretary George Eustice, Scottish rural economy minister Fergus Ewing said the once “booming” sector was failing due to complications caused by coronavirus, Brexit and tariffs imposed by the US following a dispute with the EU.“I have written to the UK government urging them to address the problems and will do my utmost to help one of Scotland’s greatest food and drink success stories get through this challenging time,” Mr Ewing said in a statement. Inside Politics newsletterThe latest news on Brexit, politics and beyond direct to your inbox every weekdayInside Politics newsletterThe latest news on Brexit, politics and beyond direct to your inbox every weekdayShow latest update
1613227256Heathrow says government’s hotel quarantine plan not readyThe government’s hotel quarantine policy is not ready to launch with less than 48 hours to go, Britain’s largest airport has warned. Ministers have promised hotel quarantine will start on Monday, but in a statement issued on Saturday morning Heathrow airport said “significant gaps still remain”.MPs have warned of chaotic scenes at airports, while the union representing border force workers says staff are going on shift for the weekend unaware of what rules they will be enforcing come Monday.My colleagues Jon Stone and Simon Calder report:Sam Hancock13 February 2021 14:401613225456Boots staff who worked at Covid government testing sites lose jobsBoots staff who volunteered to take on potentially dangerous roles at government coronavirus testing sites for the high-street giant have lost their jobs.The pharmacy’s employees have been helping to operate official drive-in centres across the UK since March.Boots said it would have been wrong to give those who had signed up to work in the government’s testing scheme special treatment in its redundancy process.Our Whitehall editor Kate Devlin has more:Sam Hancock13 February 2021 14:101613223035Patel BLM remarks ‘unacceptable,’ says shadow home secretaryPressure continues to mount on Priti Patel after she branded the anti-racism protest movement Black Lives Matter “dreadful” and criticised the practice of taking a knee.Nick Thomas-Symonds, Labour’s shadow home secretary, said his counterpart’s comments were “unacceptable” and that the BLM movement was “a powerful call for change from across society”.“To be dismissed like this by the Home Secretary is unacceptable,” he added.Our policy correspondent Jon Stone reports: Sam Hancock13 February 2021 13:301613220739Government backtracks on public sector payment cap, unions sayA government U-turn means regulations aimed at preventing excessive payments to the highest earners have been revoked. It comes after court action by trade unions which demanded the £95,000 cap on public sector redundancy payments be reversed. Unions said the rules would have hit low-paid workers the hardest, affecting long-serving local government workers who earned just £23,500 and were made redundant. Unison’s general secretary, Christina McAnea, told The Guardian on Saturday: “It’s great the government has finally seen sense and stepped back from this damaging regulation that threatened to blight the retirement of millions of workers.“Through no fault of their own, long-serving staff over the age of 55 and facing redundancy would have been hit by the regulation. Because they’re obliged to take their pensions if they lose their jobs, when combined with redundancy payments the final amount could have exceeded the £95,000 cap.“All along the Treasury was told that the regulations were flawed, and they would hit ordinary workers. Unfortunately, ministers wouldn’t listen, so Unison had to take them to court.“The government has wasted much time and money and should now abandon any plans to reintroduce the regulations.“Instead, ministers should concentrate on supporting dedicated public service workers who are delivering for their communities in the most challenging of circumstances.”Sam Hancock13 February 2021 12:521613216475Tory MP tells Johnson to help British fishermen ‘sell more’ produce Conservative MP John Redwood has urged Boris Johnson to do more for the fishing industry, saying there were “plenty of options” to help British workers “sell more of our fish” which are not being carried out. The Brexiteer tweeted: “Let’s have more determination from our government to boost our fishing industry.“There are plenty of options to help them to land, process and sell more of our fish as we take control of our waters effectively.”It comes after Michael Gove said on Thursday that Britain is prepared to do “whatever is required” to support its fishermen post-Brexit. Though he admitted there were “bureaucratic obstacles” to “negotiate and navigate” with the EU.Sam Hancock13 February 2021 11:411613215065Brexit disruption cannot be dismissed as ‘teething issues’, economists warnDisruption to trade seen so far as a result of Brexit represents the first signs of structural issues which will cut UK GDP for years to come, senior economists have said.Experts speaking to The Independent said they had seen nothing during the first six weeks of 2021 to persuade them to amend forecasts of tens of billions of pounds of damage to the economy over the coming years.The gloomy assessments came after the European Commission released the first formal analysis of the impact of Brexit to be compiled since the transition out of the EU, which predicted a 2.25 per cent hit to the UK economy by 2022 – equivalent to £40bn in lost growth over two years.Our political editor Andrew Woodcock reports:Sam Hancock13 February 2021 11:171613213839Kent lorry queues avoided as freight flows ‘back to normal’Freight flows in Kent have returned to normal meaning the lorry queue crisis has now been avoided, according to government officials.Figures seen by the BBC show outbound lorry traffic for Britain for the month so far at 98 per cent of last February’s levels, while inbound traffic is at 99 per cent of last year’s levels.One official told the broadcaster the government is “pleased that overall flows are back to normal” as it was announced some 80-90 per cent of laden lorries were arriving “border-ready”.Sam Hancock13 February 2021 10:571613211984NI vegetable company wins M&S contract amid supply issuesA Comber-based vegetable producer has been given the go ahead to supply M&S stores across Ireland amid ongoing stock logistic issues between Britain and Ireland, caused by Brexit. Mash Direct will supply eight of its products to the retailer, according to reports in the Belfast Telegraph, including its signature mash potato and potato cakes in its own brand sleeves and packaging.Last month M&S was forced to temporarily drop hundreds of products from its stores in the Republic after the company saw competitors’ lorries barred from travelling between Britain and Northern Ireland. More

Britain’s largest airport has sounded the alarm on the government’s hotel quarantine policy and warned it is not ready to launch with less than 48 hours to go.Ministers have promised hotel quarantine will start on Monday, but in a statement issued on Saturday morning Heathrow airport said “significant gaps still remain”.The airport said it had not received “the necessary reassurances” that problems will be resolved, after it emerged border officials had not even been told how the system would work.MPs have warned of chaotic scenes at airports, while the union representing border force workers says staff are going on shift for the weekend unaware of what rules they will be enforcing come Monday.“When the government announced its hotel quarantine plan, we immediately offered our help to make this successful in a complex airport environment,” a Heathrow spokesperson said.“We have been working hard with the government to try to ensure the successful implementation of the policy from Monday, but some significant gaps remain and we are yet to receive the necessary reassurances. “We will continue to work collaboratively with government over the weekend but ministers must ensure there is adequate resource and appropriate protocols in place for each step of the full end-to-end process from aircraft to hotel to avoid compromising the safety of passengers and those working at the airport.”Inside Politics newsletterThe latest news on Brexit, politics and beyond direct to your inbox every weekdayInside Politics newsletterThe latest news on Brexit, politics and beyond direct to your inbox every weekdayThe Department of Health and Social Care, which is administering the policy, has been contacted for comment.Yvette Cooper, chair of the Home Affairs Committee, warned on Friday: “Chaotic long queues with no social distancing in place have the potential to be super-spreading events that will undermine the very measures being introduced.” Under the plans, travellers from 33 Covid hotspot countries will have to isolate in hotels for 10 days. The policy was announced by Boris Johnson on 27 January in response to the emergence of concerning variants of the disease in Brazil and South Africa.But it was not until Tuesday this week that the first contracts with airport hotels were sealed, backed up by the threat of a 10-year sentence in jail for anyone caught lying in an attempt to avoid having to isolate.Legislation setting out the full basis for the new rules was only published on Friday evening.Preparations were hampered by technical issues that crashed the internet portal on which travellers from red-list countries including Portugal and the United Arab Emirates, as well as Brazil and South Africa, are supposed to book their £1,750 “quarantine package”.Meanwhile, trade unions have called for workers in quarantine hotels to be given adequate protection against coronavirus as people start arriving from overseas next week.
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Britain could be living with coronavirus in the same way it lives with the flu by the end of this year, Matt Hancock has suggested.The health secretary made the hopeful prediction amid reports that Boris Johnson will unveil a three-stage roadmap for the lifting of restrictions later this month.”I hope that Covid-19 will become a treatable disease by the end of the year,” Mr Hancock told the Telegraph newspaper.He added that new treatments “over the months to come” would help turn Covid “from a pandemic that affects all of our lives into another illness that we have to live with, like we do flu”.Under reported plans for lifting lockdown, pubs across England could be serving customers by Easter weekend at the beginning of April, while the future of the tier system is thought to be in doubt. Current thinking in Whitehall suggests schools would be the first to reopen in March, followed by shops if the R number continues to stay below one and cases continue to fall. Hospitality businesses would follow if the falls in cases were sustained.The approach to reopening, expected to be confirmed by the prime minister on 22 February, would please many of Mr Johnson’s Tory backbenchers, who are calling for restrictions to be lifted quickly. Inside Politics newsletterThe latest news on Brexit, politics and beyond direct to your inbox every weekdayInside Politics newsletterThe latest news on Brexit, politics and beyond direct to your inbox every weekdayBut a top scientist advising the Government has urged caution and said another wave as big as the one currently engulfing the UK could hit if all restrictions are lifted too soon.Professor Steven Riley, a member of the Spi-M modelling group, has said the rollout of the vaccination programme did not mean coronavirus controls could be ended.”No vaccine is perfect. We are certainly going to be in the situation where we can allow more infection in the community but there is a limit,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Saturday morning
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Disruption to trade seen in the first weeks of Brexit cannot be dismissed simply as “teething problems”, but represents the first signs of structural issues which will cut UK GDP for years to come, senior economists have said. Although hard figures on the cost of quitting the single market and customs union will not emerge for a few months, experts speaking to The Independent said they had seen nothing during the first six weeks of 2021 to persuade them to amend forecasts of tens of billions of pounds of damage to the economy over the coming years.The gloomy assessments came after the European Commission released the first formal analysis of the impact of Brexit to be compiled since the transition out of the EU’s structures on 1 January. This predicted a 2.25 per cent hit to the UK economy by 2022 – equivalent to £40bn in lost growth over two years and more than four times the negative impact on the EU. Boris Johnson’s government has refused to produce its own impact assessment of the Trade and Cooperation Agreement which the prime minister sealed on Christmas Eve.Forecasts of a long-term hit to GDP as a result of Brexit were dismissed as “Project Fear” by Leave campaigners during the 2016 referendum campaign.But Andrew Goodwin, chief UK economist at Oxford Economics, said that it was precisely the “non-tariff barriers” of additional form-filling, queuing and regulatory obstacles to trade identified by those studies which are now hitting sectors from fisheries to parcel delivery to financial services.Inside Politics newsletterThe latest news on Brexit, politics and beyond direct to your inbox every weekdayInside Politics newsletterThe latest news on Brexit, politics and beyond direct to your inbox every weekday“All the reasons why studies like ours said that there’d be a hit to GDP are now becoming quite obvious,” he said. “And they are playing out pretty much as we said they would. What we’re seeing now in terms of delays and the cost of doing business are exactly what people like ourselves tried to model when we did our studies.“The onus now is on the government to find ways of boosting growth in other ways.”Rather than teething problems, the difficulties now being experienced are “the inevitable consequences of leaving the single market and the customs union”, he said. “It’s now up to businesses to decide how they how they adapt to that. Either you keep going as you are and accept the delays as a fact of life or over time you change where you produce, do more of one thing in the UK and more of something else in the EU.”Oxford Economics has previously forecast UK GDP will be around 3 per cent lower in the long term because of the gradual unrolling of Brexit impacts like reduced trade, loss of foreign direct investment and declining competitiveness.And Mr Goodwin said that so far there was no indication that these expectations were misplaced: “Certainly we are heading to the sort of outcomes most of our studies forecast. We’re pretty happy with our estimate that we made back in 2016, and we see no reason to change it.”Thomas Sampson, associate economics professor at the LSE, has predicted a 36 per cent fall in exports to the EU over the next decade.He said it was too early to claim that economists’ forecasts been “validated” by the experience of recent weeks. The first tranche of hard data on exports is not expected from the Office for National Statistics until mid-March, and the full impact may not be known for years to come, he said.But he said that anecdotal evidence from exporting businesses so far was “indicative that the change in relations is causing problems at the border”.He said: “The evidence that there is some disruption is what you would expect, but how big the effect will be remains to be seen.“At the moment we’re seeing what happens when you put in a customs border for UK exports to the EU. In July, we actually put in the customs border for UK imports from the EU. And then the other thing economists think is going to affect trade in the long run is, as the UK diverges from the EU in terms of policy and regulation that that will make it harder to trade.”Dr Sampson said there was “some truth” in ministers’ description of disruption at the borders as “teething problems”, as companies would certainly get to grips with the additional form-filling as time went by.But he said: “There are also permanent changes which are going to make trading harder, even once everyone understands the new system.“You might need a staff member whose job it is to fill in those forms and that’s an additional cost for businesses. It’s going to take longer to cross the Channel. As we start to see regulatory divergence, potentially you have different standards on either side of the channel which imposes an additional cost. “Those are the kind of things that will be permanent rather than just teething problems.”King’s College London political scientist Prof Anand Menon, said he remained confident in the forecast of a 7 per cent hit to GDP over the next decade made by the UK in a Changing Europe thinktank which he heads.The problems reported over the last month and a half were “pretty much as we expected”, with the exception of the additional uncertainty generated by Covid.“Some of it is teething problems, but the vast majority isn’t, and you’ve got to weigh the fact that the full gamut of checks isn’t even there yet, as controls on imports don’t come in until July,” he said.“I don’t think you’ll find any economist who says ‘We need to change our forecast because of what we have seen since Brexit happened’,” Prof Menon told The Independent.“One of the interesting things is you know you have this raft of forecasts that came out during the last four or five years. No-one has seen it as necessary to revisit those forecasts. That tells you something doesn’t it?“We’re talking about long term structural changes to the way we trade. The barriers that people expected are going to be there.” More

Ministers have recruited a host of British sporting legends to help launch their second vaccine drive in less than a week as they battle to vaccinate huge numbers of those most at risk from coronavirus. England’s 1966 World Cup hero Sir Geoff Hurst is among those urging older people to “get it done”. The government says it is due to meet its target to offer a jab to everyone in the first four priority groups by Monday. Now, however, the push is on to ensure as many people as possible take the chance to be inoculated. The move reveals how much of the government’s vaccine strategy depends on a high rate of take-up among those most likely to be hospitalised or die from the disease.The top four groups account for 88 per cent of all Covid deaths, the government warns.
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“I don’t support protest…” Was it that a simple gaffe of the type we’ve grown to expect from Priti Patel, or more of a Freudian slip? In truth, it wasn’t all that revealing. Ms Patel may not personally have much in common with Donald Trump, but she does possess an almost Trumpian talent to spot incipient cultural conflict and ignite it for political gain. Or, in this case, reignite it, as she seized the opportunity presented by a radio interview to drip contempt on the Black Lives Matter movement and the custom of “taking a knee”. She may not be able to pronounce long numbers, but her populist instincts are preternaturally sharp. Both BLM and taking a knee have been twisted and redefined – you might say gaslit – to suit a particular agenda. BLM is supposedly now some kind of highly disciplined Bolshevik-style political cadre dedicated to the overthrow of “our history”, whatever that means, while taking a knee is presented as some sort of grotesque act of racial subjugation. It is quite the opposite, and the Black Lives Matter movement, which has spawned some organised groups, is an inchoate collection of honourable people making a simple but powerful gesture against racism. No conservative or patriot need fear or despise it, and there would be no objection to the likes of Boris Johnson or Nigel Farage joining in. More

Immigration officers have not yet received operational guidance on how the new system of mandatory quarantine hotels will work, little more than 48 hours before the scheme comes into effect. Lucy Moreton of the Immigration Services Union told The Independent that staff were going off shift for the weekend unaware of whether they will be expected to take on new enforcement duties on Monday morning.The chair of the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee, Yvette Cooper, also warned that without clear guidance there was a danger of chaotic scenes at airports increasing the risk of spread of coronavirus variants.“Chaotic long queues with no social distancing in place have the potential to be super-spreading events that will undermine the very measures being introduced,” she warned. Mandatory 10-day hotel isolation for travellers from 33 Covid hotspot countries was announced by Boris Johnson on 27 January in response to the emergence of concerning variants of the disease in Brazil and South Africa.But it was not until Tuesday this week that the first contracts with airport hotels were sealed, backed up by the threat of a 10-year sentence in jail for anyone caught lying in an attempt to avoid having to isolate.Inside Politics newsletterThe latest news on Brexit, politics and beyond direct to your inbox every weekdayInside Politics newsletterThe latest news on Brexit, politics and beyond direct to your inbox every weekdayPreparations were hampered by technical issues which crashed the internet portal on which travellers from red-list countries including Portugal and the United Arab Emirates, as well as Brazil and South Africa, are supposed to book their £1,750 “quarantine package”.Ms Moreton said staff were concerned that they had no instructions yet on whether they will be expected to check every passenger’s passport and ticket to catch out those trying to dodge hotel quarantine, which would mean substantially longer queues in airports.“It may be that we’re expected to simply take it on trust when people say they have a hotel arranged and Border Force staff won’t be expected to do anything, in which case those trying to beat the system will succeed,” she said. “Or at the other end of the spectrum, we could be expected to check and confirm with every single arriving passenger, which is a significant amount of effort. “We don’t know if people are going to be isolated on aircraft or placed in separate queues. By Monday morning we are not going to have detention powers, so what do we do if somebody runs off? I recognise the incredible difficulty of this for the Home Office, but the more notice you give staff, the better.”Ms Moreton said that arrivals from red-list countries have soared at Heathrow and Gatwick over the past few days, with UK nationals apparently trying to get back to Britain ahead of the deadline for hotel quarantine. Already, many staff at Heathrow were self-isolating after coming into contact with infected people, she said.And border officials are worried about an angry reaction from those told they must comply with the new rules.“When passenger locator forms first came in, the rate of verbal abuse of staff absolutely sky-rocketed,” she said. “If you are trying to avoid quarantine, you’re going to be very angry with the person catching you doing that. “Even if it doesn’t come to physical assault, staff are very concerned about verbal abuse, being spat at or even coughed on.“Staff are also concerned that they will have much longer interaction time with passengers, placing them at risk.”Ms Cooper said that the failure to provide guidance to frontline staff was “not good enough” and demanded to know when it would be issued.“It has been two and a half weeks since the prime minister announced the hotel quarantine policy in parliament and it had been briefed for weeks before that, and yet Border Force have had no time to plan,” she said. “Why haven’t the basic details been sorted? Home Office ministers need to get a grip of this very quickly.”She warned: “The Immigration Services Union has told me that a large number of Border Force staff are self-isolating at the same time as more people are rushing home from high-risk countries in advance of hotel quarantine rules. “But this is going to get worse from Monday if Border Force officers don’t yet know if they will be asked to check for high-risk arrivals, if those passengers will be taken straight from the gate to hotels or whether they will join the queue with everyone else. “We can’t afford chaotic arrangements like this as it makes it easier for new variants to spread.”Ms Cooper called on the Home Office to make clear urgently what arrangements are being made to ensure that arrivals from red-list countries do not queue in airports alongside others who are free to go straight onto public transport to travel home.The Independent has contacted the Home Office for comment. More