UK Politics

EU unimpressed over Liz Truss’s post-Brexit threats on Northern IrelandThe European Union is “not too impressed” with Liz Truss’s threat to trigger Article 16 of the Northern Ireland protocol if talks fail. The EU’s ambassador to the UK, Joao Vale de Almeida, responded to the foreign secretary’s comments by saying: “We’ve heard this before from the government, so we’re not surprised. We are not too impressed. “We still believe it’s not very helpful that we keep agitating the issue of Article 16.”He said the EU wanted to “reconnect” with the British government. Article 16 would allow either the EU or the UK to take unilateral “safeguard” measures if they feel that the deal is leading to serious practical issues or is causing the diversion of trade. The measures are allowed if the deal is causing “economic, societal or environmental difficulties”. Writing in the Sunday Telegraph, Liz Truss said: “My priority is to protect peace and stability in Northern Ireland. I want a negotiated solution but if we have to use legitimate provisions including Article 16, I am willing to do that.”Show latest update

1641739422Plans for up to a quarter of teachers to be off work due to Omicron, education secretary saysEducation secretary Nadhim Zahawi has said that preparations are being made for up to a quarter of teachers to be off work in the coming weeks with Covid. Some schools are already reporting as many as 40 percent staff shortages, he said. Read more about what Zahawi said here: Holly Bancroft9 January 2022 14:431641737361Priti Patel plans to impose legal duty for security on venues following Manchester Arena bombing Venues would have a legal duty to provide security under new plans draw up by home secretary Priti Patel. The proposals come in the wake of the Manchester Arena bombing that killed 22 people and are due for publication on Monday. Figen Murray, mother of 29-year-old victim Martyn Hett, has campaigned for the introduction of a Martyn’s law which would make it a legal requirement for venues and local authorities to have action plans in place in case of terrorist attacks.Priti Patel said the new legislation would not place an “excessive burden on small business”. She said: “Following the tragic attack at the Manchester Arena, we have worked closely with Figen Murray, victims’ groups and partners to develop proposals to improve protective security around the country.“I am grateful for their tireless commitment and those who responded to the consultation, the majority of whom agreed tougher measures are needed to protect the public from harm.“We will never allow terrorists to restrict our freedoms and way of life, which is why we are committed to bringing forward legislation this year that will strike the right balance between public safety, whilst not placing excessive burden on small businesses.”Holly Bancroft9 January 2022 14:091641735582DUP welcomes Truss’ comments ahead of meeting with EULeader of the DUP Sir Jeffrey Donaldson has issued his support for Liz Truss’s piece in the Sunday Telegraph in which she sets out her intention for UK-EU Brexit talks and threatens to trigger Article 1 of the Northern Ireland Protocol if needed. Sir Donaldson retweeted the piece with the comments: “A welcome statement of intent by Liz Truss ahead of talks next week. She is right that unionists do not consent to the protocol and we need to government to follow through on their commitment to safeguard the Union & protect Northern Ireland’s place in the UK internal market.”He then shared a tweet with a quote from the the piece, where Liz Truss says: “But let me be clear, I will not sign up to anything which sees the people of Northern Ireland unable to benefit from the same decisions on taxation & spending as the rest of the UK, or which still sees good moving within our country being subject to checks”. Holly Bancroft9 January 2022 13:391641733559Johnson to reportedly escape new standards investigation over flat renovation – TelegraphA fresh inquiry will not be opened into Boris Johnson’s Downing Street flat renovation, The Sunday Telegraph has reported. Number Ten was allegedly told last week that Kathryn Stone, the parliamentary commissioner for standards, will not open a new inquiry into the redecoration. The reported decision comes after two separate probes from the Electoral Commission and Lord Geidt into how the project was funded. Holly Bancroft9 January 2022 13:051641732352Nadhim Zahawi: People should listen to Rafael Nadal not DjokovicEducation secretary Nadhim Zahawi has called tennis star Rafael Nadal a “hero” in the “Djokovic saga” and has called on people to get vaccinated. He said: “I would encourage everybody to get their jab, because it will protect them, and their family and their community.”Listen to his comments here: Holly Bancroft9 January 2022 12:451641731512Mayor of Bristol: ‘Symbolic act’ of toppling statues should not be a replacement for ‘real change’The Mayor of Bristol, Marvin Rees, has said that the acquittals of four protesters who toppled Edward Colston’s statue were “less significant” for the city than for the defendants. “In the lives of the four individuals it is incredibly significant because their futures faced a bit of a fork in the road in some ways,” he told Trevor Philips on Sunday. “For the work on race inequality in Bristol much more widely, it is less significant because when we’re tackling race inequality, we are looking at those underlying drivers of political and economic inequality. “The verdict itself doesn’t actually touch on those very real and immediate issues.”Mr Rees said that “symbolic acts”, such as the toppling of Colston, should not be a replacement for “real substantial systemic change”. He said: “Symbolic acts, while they are important, if they begin to take the place of acts of political and economic policy and real substance become a problem.“If we look around in five years, realise that nothing’s really changed people point to all these things that have happened and we say, ‘Oh those were just acts, those are just performances’.“We have to be very careful in the way we handle these issues.”Press Association contributed to this report. Holly Bancroft9 January 2022 12:311641730552Unsafe cladding: Gove to announce clamp down on developersHousing secretary Michael Gove is set to announce action on developers who have built unsafe homes with flammable cladding, it has been reported. In a statement to the commons on Monday, Gove is expected to say that “those who knowingly put lives at risk should be held to account for their crimes. “And those who are seeking to profit from the crisis by making it worse should be stopped from doing so.”He comments have been reported in The Sunday Times and include a warning to developers that “we are coming for you”. Gove will also say: “I am putting them on notice. If you missold dangerous products like cladding or insulation, if you cut corners to save cash as you developed or refurbished homes, we are coming for you.”Holly Bancroft9 January 2022 12:151641728516Windfall tax on North Sea companies ‘doesn’t add up’, Nadhim Zahawi saysEducation minister Nadhim Zahawi has said that Labour’s new plan for a windfall tax on North Sea oil and gas companies “doesn’t add up” as the businesses are “already struggling”. He said the policy proposals weren’t “going to cut it”. He argued the Conservative’s rise in the national living wage will help people deal with the rising energy costs. Listen to Zahawi being questioned on LBC news: Holly Bancroft9 January 2022 11:411641726832The sooner EU and UK move past Brexit spats the better equipped they will be to tackle Russia threat – EU ambassador to the UK EU ambassador to the UK, Joao Vale de Almeida, has said that the soon the EU and the UK move past Brexit-related issues “the better equipped we will be” to address “very serious issues”. Referring to the build of Russian troops on Ukraine’s border and Russia’s military support of Kazakhstan, he said: “This is one area where the EU and UK can do a lot together”. “My sense in looking at the wider picture is that the sooner we move on from issues that are still openly related to Brexit, in particular the Northern Ireland situation, the sooner we move on from that, the better equipped we will be, the EU and UK, to work together in addressing very serious issues.”Press Association contributed to this report. Holly Bancroft9 January 2022 11:131641725551What is Article 16 of the Northern Ireland protocol? Article 16 is part of the Northern Ireland protocol, a Brexit deal made between the UK and the EU in October 2019. The protocol leaves Northern Ireland in the EU’s single market for goods meaning that items can flow freely between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. However this differentiates Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK and creates an effective “sea border” between the two. Article 16 is effectively an escape clause that would allow unilateral “safeguard” measures to be taken by either the EU or the UK if they conclude that the deal is leading to serious practical issues or is causing the diversion of trade. These measures are allowed if the deal is causing “economic, societal or environmental difficulties”. Article 16 is not designed to jettison the deal entirely and, after safeguarding measures are implemented, negotiations over the deal would continue. Measures would be jointly reviewed every three months so that updated actions could be taken.However disagreements could escalate if no resolution on the “difficulties” is found. Holly Bancroft9 January 2022 10:52 More

Labour has called for a windfall tax on North Sea oil and gas to help cushion the impact of an expected £600 rise in household energy bills this spring.Shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves announced measures which would save most households £200 and protect the poorest almost entirely from the financial hit forecast when the energy price cap is reviewed in April.Energy sector analysts expect the review to result in a leap in the average annual bill for gas and electricity from £1,277 to around £1,865, adding to a cost-of-living crisis caused by 5 per cent inflation and a looming hike in national insurance contributions.Ms Reeves accused the Conservative government of a “decade of dither, delay and poor planning” on energy, pointing to a failure swiftly to develop nuclear and renewable alternatives or to insulate homes, and inadequate regulation which she blamed for dozens of power companies going bust.Under the Labour plans, there would be a 12-month holiday from VAT on domestic energy bills, saving 28.5 million households an average £89 at a cost of £2.5bn to the Treasury.Labour would spend an additional £3.5bn a year on the warm homes discount, increasing the one-off annual payment from £140 to £400 and extending eligibility to around 9.3 million households – one-third of the British total.All working families with children claiming universal credit, as well as 220,000 pensioners with some savings, would be brought into the scheme, which currently goes only to the least well-off.And Labour would provide loans to energy companies to cover the £2.6bn cost of taking on customers from failed suppliers, which would otherwise be charged to bill-payers at an estimated £94 per customer. A £600m contingency fund would be used to support energy intensive businesses.The total £6.6bn bill for the package would be covered by a one-off £1.2bn windfall tax on North Sea companies which have reaped unexpected profits from the recent surge in energy prices, as well as by allocating additional VAT payments of £3.1bn and oil and gas tax receipts of £2.3bn.In addition, the shadow chancellor said Labour would:Cut Britain’s reliance on imported gas by accelerating home-grown renewables and new nuclear.Make sure 19 million homes are warm and well-insulated, saving households an average of £400 a year on bills.Improve regulation of the market, with a pledge to never again let energy companies “play fast and loose with the rules”.Ms Reeves said: “There is a global gas price crisis, but 10 years of the Conservatives’ failed energy policy, and dither and delay has created a price crisis that’s being felt by everyone.“We want to stop bills going up.“That’s why Labour would give families security by taking fully funded measures to save most households around £200 or more, targeting extra support on top of that for the squeezed middle, pensioners, and lowest earners.“But we need more than a short-term fix.“Labour’s plan to keep energy bills lower in future would see us accelerate home-grown renewables and new nuclear, retrofit 19 million homes to save households an average of £400 a year on their bills, and reform our broken energy system to stop energy companies playing fast and loose with the rules.“The Tories have been asleep at the wheel, with hard-working people paying the price. Labour has a plan to fix this.”Shadow climate change secretary Ed Miliband said the package would protect consumers while allowing the UK to make the “green transition” away from fossil fuels.It was “entirely right” that the energy producers which have benefitted from the price spike should be asked to pay “their fair share”, he said.The Labour move follows an earlier Liberal Democrat call for a Robin Hood tax on North Sea companies to alleviate fuel poverty.Party leader Sir Ed Davey released figures showing 130,000 people in fuel poverty in cabinet members’ constituencies, including some of the Blue Wall Tory seats which Lib Dems are targeting following their victories in Chesham & Amersham and North Shropshire.These included 7,896 fuel poor households (17 per cent of the total) in foreign secretary Liz Truss’s South West Norfolk, 7,037 (14.9 per cent) in chancellor Rishi Sunak’s Richmond in Yorkshire, 5,392 in Boris Johnson’s Uxbridge and South Ruislip and 2,590 in deputy prime minister Dominic Raab’s Esher & Walton.“Cabinet ministers are turning a blind eye to families in their own backyard struggling with soaring heating bills,” said Sir Ed.“There is a growing revolt in the Conservative heartlands against Boris Johnson’s government, and their failure to help people with the cost of living crisis is only making it worse.“We need an urgent package of support now to help people cope with the cost of living crisis. That should include Liberal Democrat calls for a Robin Hood tax on oil and gas firms seeing record profits, raising enough cash to give over 7 million households £300 off their heating bills this year.” More

Education secretary Nadhim Zahawi has said preparations are being made for many as a quarter of all teachers to be off work in the coming weeks as Covid infections increase with the return of schools following the Christmas break.Some schools are already reporting as many as 40 per cent staff shortages, he said.The education secretary said that the government was acting responsibly by making contingency plans for as many as 25 per cent absences across England, but Liberal Democrats said that it amounted to an “admission of failure” in the drive to keep schools open.Mr Zahawi insisted that the Omicron wave of coronavirus will not be allowed to disrupt vocational exams due to take place this month, pledging that they will go ahead in January as planned.He confirmed that GCSE and A-level exams will not go fully back to the pre-Covid system in the summer, but will include an element of teacher assessment for 2022 only, to reflect the disruption to pupils’ education from the series of lockdowns.The education secretary defended instructions for pupils to wear face-coverings in the classroom, despite Department for Education research suggesting that it cuts the number of children infected by only 0.6 percentage points.And he acknowledged that vaccination of 12-15 year-olds needs to go “much, much faster”, after a target of jabbing a majority by the October half-term was missed.Speaking to BBC1’s Sunday Morning, Mr Zahawi said the next few weeks will be “bumpy” for schools.He praised the “Dunkirk spirit” they have shown in ensuring face-to-face learning can continue during the Omicron outbreak, and said that only 1-1.2 per cent of English secondaries were fully closed last week, though 10 per cent reported some closures or staggered opening.Staff absences due to illness and self-isolation has risen from 8 per cent at the end of last term to 8.5 per cent now, he said.But he added: “That will increase, no doubt, because now schools are back we’re going to see an increase in infections.“We have to make plans for every outcome. That’s the responsible thing to do at the moment.“Last week’s review said actually some schools have had higher than that – up to 40 per cent absent – and they still maintained their ability to open for face-to-face education, which is great. We want to learn from them.“But I have to have contingency plans for 10, 15, 20, or 25 per cent absenteeism because obviously Omicron is far more infectious.”Mr Zahawi said that vaccinations in schools will resume on Monday, telling interviewer Sophie Raworth: “We are over 50 per cent, so over 1.2 million 12-to-15 year-olds have had the vaccine. But We have to go much, much faster, which is why we’re going back into schools on Monday with the school age vaccination programme.”He insisted that it was right for pupils to be told to wear masks in class, despite a survey released last week which showed that 3 per cent of pupils in 123 schools using face-coverings were absent due to Covid within two to three weeks, compared to 3.6 per cent where no masks were used.“That’s still thousands of pupils, it’s significant,” he said. “Those are kids and this is their future.”Defending the decision to mandate masks, Mr Zahawi said: “Because Omicron is a quantum more infectious than Delta, I felt it was the right thing to do based on the evidence.“But I don’t want to see masks in the classroom for a day longer than is necessary. And on 26 January, we’ll review that and I hope we’ll be able to take it away.”The education secretary also defended his decision to issue only 8,000 air purifiers to the 24,000 secondary schools in England.He said that 350,000 CO2 monitors had been distributed to schools to identify the classrooms where adequate ventilation cannot be achieved by measures such as opening windows.Only those rooms which could not easily deliver ventilation were being provided with purifiers, he said.It was “only right” that ministers avoided spending public money on “350,000 air purifiers that we don’t need”, he said.Mr Zahawi repeated his pledge that GCSE and A-level exams will go ahead in England this summer, after two years in which they were replaced by teacher assessments.He acknowledged that contingency planning was under way in case of a renewed surge of Covid, but said: “My absolute commitment is that exams are going ahead, both this January and for the summer for GCSEs and A-levels.”School leaders will be informed on 7 February of the precise format for the summer exams, which will be conducted on the basis of “the mean between teacher assessment and pre-Covid arrangements” in 2022, before returning to normal grading next year. Students are also expected to be given more information about the questions they will face in exams.Liberal Democrat education spokesperson Munira Wilson said: “Planning for up to a quarter of teachers to be off with Covid is an admission of failure. “The government is failing to do enough to keep schools safe and protect our children’s education and well-being.“Ministers are spending twice as much on a royal yacht than it would cost to provide an air purifier to every classroom. That tells you everything about this government’s warped sense of priorities.” More

Amid Bosnia’s greatest political crisis since the end of its 1992-95 interethnic war, the country’s Serbs celebrated an outlawed holiday Sunday with a provocative parade showcasing armored vehicles, police helicopters and law enforcement officers with rifles, marching in lockstep and singing a nationalist song. Addressing several thousand spectators gathered in Banja Luka, the de-facto capital of the Serb-run part of the country, Bosnian Serb nationalist leader Milorad Dodik disparaged sanctions Washington slapped on him last week over his alleged corrupt activities and threats to tear the country apart. “This gathering is the best response to those who deny us our rights, … who keep imposing sanctions on us,” Dodik said. “It proves to me that I must listen to you, that you did not elect me to fulfil Americans’ wishes but to fulfil the wishes of Serb people,” he added. The Jan. 9 holiday commemorates the date in 1992 when Bosnian Serbs declared the creation of their own state in Bosnia, igniting the multi-ethnic country’s devastating, nearly 4-year-long war that became a byname for ethnic cleansing and genocide. The holiday was banned in 2015 by Bosnia’s top court which ruled that the date, which falls on a Serb Christian Orthodox religious holiday, discriminates against the country’s other ethnic groups — Muslim Bosniaks and Catholic Croats. During the war that killed 100,000 people and turned half of the country’s population into refugees, Bosniaks and Croats were persecuted and almost completely expelled from the now Serb-administered half of Bosnia. After the war, under the terms of the U.S.-brokered Dayton peace agreement, Bosnia was divided into two semi-autonomous governing entities — Republika Srpska and one dominated by Bosniaks and Croats.Each part has its own government, parliament and police, but the two are linked by shared, state-wide institutions, including the judiciary, army, security agencies and tax administration. All actions at a national level require consensus from all three ethnic groups.Dodik has for years been advocating the separation of the Bosnian Serb mini-state from the rest of the country and making it part of neighboring Serbia This winter, he intensified his secessionist campaign, pledging to form an exclusively Serb army, judiciary and tax system. He described Bosniaks as “second-rate people” and “treacherous converts” who sold their “original (Orthodox Christian) faith for dinner.”Earlier Sunday, as part of holiday celebrations, Bosnian Serb officials participated in Serb Christian Orthodox ceremonies, broadcast live on local television, in the city’s main church, while a special police unit sang, while marching in the parade, a song about defending the Orthodox Christian cross and “the shiny new Serb Republic.” The celebrations of the divisive holiday continue each year despite it being outlawed by the top court, and have been consistently criticized by the U.S. and the European Union. However, the parade and other ceremonies on Sunday, were attended by the top officials of neighboring Serbia, including prime minister Ana Brnabic and parliament speaker Ivica Dacic; Russian and Chinese diplomats in Bosnia; and several officials of France’s far-right National Rally party. In recent months, the staunchly pro-Moscow Dodik has repeatedly voiced hope that the Serbs’ “true friends” — Russia, China and the champions of illiberal democracy within the European Union — will serve as his bulwark against the “tyranny” of Western democracies More

Equalities minister Liz Truss is facing criticism for failing to set up a new LGBT+ advisory panel, almost nine months after disbanding one she had clashed with over “fundamental disagreements”.Anneliese Dodds, the shadow equalities minister, told The Independent the lack of progress demonstrated “everything you need to know about this government’s commitment to tackling the issues facing LGBT+ people”.The advisory panel – set up under former prime minister Theresa May’s administration in 2018 – was designed to hold ministers to account over the vow to improve the lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in Britain.But it was disbanded in April 2021 by Ms Truss after a series of members resigned. One accused government ministers of creating a “hostile environment” for LGBT+ people while others criticised repeated delays over a ban on so-called “conversion therapy”.Ms Truss, who still holds the equalities brief alongside her new post as foreign secretary in Boris Johnson’s government, later admitted to MPs there were “fundamental disagreements”, including over the issue of self-identification for trans people.At the time the panel was disbanded – nine months ago – both No 10 and Ms Truss pledged to create a “replacement” panel in due course.And in May last year, the equalities minister also said the government would “shortly put out an expression of interest” for recruiting a new LGBT+ advisory panel. But in the time that has passed, no plans have been publicly disclosed.Jayne Ozanne, a former member of the panel, told The Independent: “There’s sadly quite a pattern forming of this secretary of state promising things for the LGBT+ community and then not delivering in the promised time scales. Let’s hope this is the year that all changes.”A second member of the disbanded panel, professor Catherine Meads, said she was “disappointed” and pointed out that a new panel could have aided work on “several things”, including the current consultation for a legislative ban on “conversion therapy”.“However there is the Safe to Be Me international conference in the summer and I haven’t really seen any progress on any LGBT issues recently,” she added.“For example my area is health, and in nearly two years into a pandemic we still have no data on Covid in sexual or gender minority people from the government, the ONS [Office for National Statistics] or the NHS. Why is that?”Paul Martin, another member of the former panel and chief executive at the LGBT Foundation, told The Independent: “Since the disbandment of the government’s LGBT advisory panel in April 2021 we are disappointed to see little progress has been made on establishing a new panel almost one year on.“Recent developments for LGBTQ+ people show we are slowly moving in the right direction, but there is still so much more to be done for LGBTQ+ communities.”He added: “As a former member of the LGBT+ panel, it is clear there is a need for the government to have an advisory panel of specialists and experts who can advise and support them on ensuring the needs of the LGBTQ+ communities are clearly heard, and feed into the development of policy.“We urgently ask that the government confirms the intent to reinstate an LGBTQ+ advisory panel, to update the LGBTQ+ action plan, and to provide a firm timetable for these.”Ms Dodds, Labour’s shadow equalities secretary and party chair, added: “The failure to bring forward plans for a replacement tells you everything you need to know about this government’s commitment to tackling the issues facing LGBT+ people and its willingness to take advice from those who understand them best. Liz Truss promised action on this, and yet again this government is failing to deliver.”A government Equality Hub spokesperson did not give an update on the replacement panel, but said: “The government is committed to promoting and realising equality for LGBT people at home and abroad.“Over the last year, we have taken steps to improve the lives of LGBT people, including the launch of our proposals to ban conversion therapy and the modernisation of the gender recognition process. Later this year we will also be delivering the UK’s first global LGBT conference, Safe to Be Me: A Global Equality Conference.“The government continues to draw on the expertise and experience from the newly created roles of Special Envoy on LGBT rights, Lord Herbert of the South Downs, and LGBT Business Champion, Iain Anderson, as well as Dr Brady, the National LGBT Health Adviser.”The Conservative MP Crispin Blunt said he was “not personally wedded to the existence of an advisory panel” saying he had a “good relationship” with Lord Herbert, Mr Anderson and Dr Brady, who he claimed were a “mark of the government’s renewed ambition to take a decisive stance on LGBT+ rights and almost certainly carry much more weight in terms of policy change and internal scrutiny than a relatively anonymous panel”.However, he added the “proof of the pudding will be in the eating” and said their first major hurdle will be getting a “comprehensive conversion therapy ban passed”. More

The NHS frontline is now “stretched perilously thin” due to the pressure of the Omicron variant of coronavirus, a senior representative of hospital trusts has warned.The chief executive of NHS Providers, Chris Hopson, said that he believes the health service will avoid collapse under the pressure of thousands of Covid patients on top of the regular winter demands.But he said it would be wrong for ministers to under-estimate the degree of difficulty which trusts are facing.Mr Hopson’s comments come as cabinet minister Nadhim Zahawi accepted that the NHS faces “a rocky few weeks”, but insisted that the government was doing everything possible to ensure it was able to “ride out this bump” caused by the Omicron variant.Speaking to BBC1’s Sunday Morning, the NHS Providers boss said that the situation in initial Omicron hotspot London was now “stabilising”, with the epicentre now moving to the northwest and northeast of England.“If you look outside London, then there’s no doubt the NHS frontline is going to be stretched perilously thin,” said Mr Hopson.“But because we are a national health service, one trust can help another, so I think that the frontline will hold.“But  we should not underestimate the degree of pressure trusts are seeing.”The director of public health for London, Kevin Fenton, said it appeared the capital had passed the peak of Omicron cases around New Year’s Day, but as many as one in 10 residents are still infected with the variant.He told Sky News’s Trevor Phillips on Sunday: “We think we may have passed or are at the peak.“Data from the ONS (Office for National Statistics) suggests that the peak may have occurred at or just about the New Year period. “We’re seeing reductions in overall case rates across the city and the prevalence of infection within the community. “But remember that infection levels are still very, very high. The ONS figures suggest that nearly one in 10 Londoners are still infected with the with the disease. “So it means that we’re not yet out of this critical phase of the pandemic, although we may well be past the peak.”Mr Hopson said: “What we’ve got is this combination of three things at once – we’ve got rising Covid cases, we’ve got rising staff absence, significantly due to COVID. But we’ve also got on top of that the ordinary winter pressures.“This fortnight is the busiest fortnight in the NHS calendar. The combination of those three things at once and it is causing very, very significant pressure.“Each individual place will have its own dynamics. In some places is the volume (of cases) that’s very difficult, in other places it’s the sheer volume of staff absences.“You can see from the number of critical incidents that got declared last week that, in some places, this is really difficult.”The NHS Providers chief executive added: “We had a very, very stretched workforce before Covid hit. We had 100,000 staff vacancies.“What we’re now finding is that for some of our staff, this 18 months on top of all of that is being very, very difficult. We have to have a long-term workforce plan for the NHS. “It’s really important that the government should accept an amendment that’s coming into the House of Lords to ensure that we get long-term workforce planning. Otherwise, we’re going to have more and more burnt-out doctors, more and more burnt- out nurses more and more burnt-out frontline staff. “We have to get the right number of people in the NHS providing the care that’s needed so we don’t give our staff an impossible workload day in day out.” More

Labour has called on Rishi Sunak to reverse the government’s planned 2.5 per cent hike in National Insurance contributions in his March budget.Shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves said that Labour would not go ahead with the rise – made up of 1.25 per cent each on employers’ and employees’ payments.And she said that Mr Sunak still has time to halt the controversial rise before it comes into effect in April.Conservative MPs are piling increasing pressure on the chancellor to rethink the tax rise, intended to fund improvements to the social care system as well as helping the NHS deal with the backlog of cases which has built up during the Covid pandemic.Leader of the Commons Jacob Rees-Mogg broke ranks at last week’s cabinet to call for the rise to be halted.Ms Reeves said it appeared Mr Sunak would have to be “dragged kicking and screaming” into dropping the £12bn hike, which will raise the overall tax take to its highest sustained level since the 1950s at a time of a cost-of-living crisis.Challenged over whether Labour would reverse the rise, Ms Reeves told BBC1’s Sunday Morning: “If we were in government, we would not be going ahead with it now.“They still have time to act. The government can do the right thing.“There is another fiscal statement from the chancellor set for 23 March, just over a week before this tax increase is due to come in.“I want the government, I want the chancellor to rethink. The chancellor has to be dragged kicking and screaming to every announcement he makes.“You’ve now got a chorus of Conservative MPs as well as the Labour Party saying ‘Do the right thing, think again on National Insurance’.“This double whammy of a National Insurance hike at the same time that gas and electricity bills are going to be going through the rood is just a catastrophe that families and pensioners cannot afford.” More

Cabinet minister Nadhim Zahawi has said he would like to see a cut in isolation times after a positive Covid test from seven to five days “as soon as possible”.The education secretary said it was important to be “careful” about the danger of increasing infection rates, and said he would follow the advice of a review currently being conducted by the UK Health Security Agency.But he said that five-day isolation would help “mitigate” pressures on schools, as well as healthcare and other critical services, caused by staff shortages.The former vaccines minister acknowledged that the NHS is set for “a rocky few weeks”, but insisted that the government was doing everything possible to ensure it was able to “ride out this bump” caused by the Omicron variant.Speaking to Sky News’ Trevor Phillips on Sunday, Mr Zahawi said he would “always defer to the scientific advice” on five-day isolation.“Of course it would help for that to happen as soon as possible,” he said.“It would certainly help mitigate some of the pressures on schools and our critical workforce and others.“But I would absolutely be driven by the advice from the experts, the scientists, on whether we should move to five days from seven days. We don’t want to create the wrong outcome by higher levels of infection.”The former vaccines minister said he hoped the UK will lead the world in moving from the Covid pandemic to an endemic situation in which the country is able to live with the virus.But he warned that the country need to be alert to new variants of coronavirus over the coming 10 years.“I hope we will be one of the first major economies to demonstrate to the world how you transition from pandemic to endemic and then deal with this for however long it remains – five, six, seven or 10 years,” said Mr Zahawi.The education secretary told Sky News there were “absolutely not” any plans to end free lateral flow tests.“I don’t recognise that at all,” he said. “This is absolutely not where we are at.” More