UK Politics

Boris Johnson’s plan B measures to tackle the spread of the Omicron variant in England is working, the vaccine minister has said, despite hospitals across the country declaring critical incidents.Six NHS trusts declared critical incidents – where bosses are concerned they may not be able to provide priority services – while the NHS Confederation said the health service was is in “a state of crisis”.Vaccines minister Maggie Throup said on Tuesday that “plan B is working” and indicated the government would not heed calls for further restrictions.“As you can see from the number of hospitalisations – it’s far, far fewer than this time last year. The vaccines are working. The measures to get people working from home are working,” she told Sky News.Ms Throup added: “There will be a cabinet meeting today, and I don’t see any reason why we need to change.”It comes as the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) called for a more “cautious” approach to restrictions in England to bring the country in line with Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.In a letter to health secretary Sajid Javid, the RCN’s council chair Carol Popplestone and general secretary Pat Cullen said the differences in restrictions across the UK were causing confusion.“It is confusing and concerning that the different UK governments have set out their own different rules and regulations in relation to the management of the pandemic,” they said.The nursing chiefs added: “We therefore ask that, as secretary of state for health and social care, you work with counterparts across government on a more cautious approach for England without further delay.”England and Scotland recorded a combined 157,758 new cases of Covid on Monday, while the number of patients in hospitals across England with the disease reached 13,151 – up from 12,615 on New Year’s Day.University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay became the latest to signal alarm, confirming on Monday evening that the trust had declared an “internal critical incident” and some non-urgent operations and procedures would be suspended.Dr Sakthi Karunanithi, public health director for Lancashire County Council, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme the county was at “the foothills” of an Omicron wave. “Lancashire is beginning to experience what London did at the beginning of last month … we are bracing ourselves for a tsunami of Omicron cases in Lancashire.”Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, which represents hospitals, said: “In many parts of the health service, we are currently in a state of crisis.”Mr Johnson insisted on Monday that no further Covid restrictions were needed in England, though he admitted that “the pressure on our NHS and on our hospitals is going to be considerable in the course of the next couple of weeks, and maybe more”.Ms Throup also defended the government’s decision to stick with current measures, saying people being hospitalised with Covid are broadly showing less severe symptoms than before.“At the moment, if you look at the people who have been hospitalised, they are going in with less severe conditions than before,” Ms Throup told Sky News. “The numbers that are in hospital beds is about half what it was a year ago – and that just shows the power of the vaccine.”Ms Throup said she was “not sure” how many Britons were currently in self-isolation, and was not able to say how many hospitals were struggling with critical incidents.“It is fast-moving … it would be wrong of me to say a number, because shortly there could be another one, or another trust could actually say ‘No, we’re back on track now, we’re OK’,” she said.Mr Johnson’s government will not be cutting the number of days spent in self isolation in England after contracting Covid from seven to five, the vaccines minister also confirmed.“We’ve recently reduced it from 10 days to seven,” she told LBC. “At the moment, actually, we don’t feel it’s appropriate to reduce it any further because we will be very concerned that people will still be infectious and be able to pass on the disease.”Asked about missed booster appointments and a decline in the daily number of people being boosted, Ms Throup said: “We’ve just been through two weekends of bank holiday and I think that’s quite clear that numbers will change as we move forward.” More

Sir Keir Starmer has come out in support of Tony Blair after a petition to strip the former Labour prime minister of his knighthood surpassed 500,000 signatures.The Labour leader said that it was not a “thorny” issue and insisted that Sir Tony should keep his knighthood as he defended his inclusion on the New Year’s honours list.“I don’t think it’s thorny at all – I think he deserves the honour,” he told ITV’s Good Morning Britain. “Obviously I respect the fact that people have different views.”Sir Keir said: “He won three elections, he was a very successful prime minister. I haven’t got time to list this morning all his many achievements, which I think vastly improved our country.”The Labour leader added: “Whether it’s minimum wage, Sure Start centres for young families … The one I would pick out is the work he has done in Northern Ireland and the peace process, and the huge change that has made.”Questioned about the strength of feeling about the Blair government’s invasion of Iraq, Sir Keir said: “I understand there are strong views on the Iraq war, there were back at the time and there still are.”He added: “But that does not detract from the fact that Tony Blair was a very successful prime minister of this country and made a huge difference to the lives of millions of people in this country.”The Change.org petition – set up three days ago after the former Labour PM was appointed a Knight Companion of the Most Noble Order of the Garter – had received more than 537,000 signatures by Tuesday morning.A statement on the petition said: “Tony Blair caused irreparable damage to both the constitution of the United Kingdom and to the very fabric of the nation’s society. He was personally responsible for causing the death of countless innocent, civilian lives and servicemen in various conflicts.”Asked about Sir Tony’s knighthood on Tuesday, Tory minister Maggie Throup said the former Labour prime minister “did lots of good things – and I think it’s only right that we do honour our previous prime ministers”.Ms Throup said the decision “opens doors” for others, suggesting Gordon Brown and David Cameron could be knighted and Theresa May could be given a damehood.Meanwhile, Sir Keir said the government should try to keep schools open in January through more vaccinations, more ventilation and mass testing. “If there is an outbreak … let’s not go back to, ‘The bubble goes home’ or, ‘The class goes home’,” he said.“We’ve seen far too much disruption. I would say have testing – mass testing, so that if there is a child who test positive, those other children who have been in contact with that child get tested … if they’re not positive they stay at school.”Asked on GMB if he had the “killer instinct” to become prime minister, the Labour leader said he wanted to “celebrate” the country and said it was his ambition to make sure “you and your family get the security, prosperity and respect that they deserve”.The Labour leader is due to give a speech in Birmingham on Tuesday, where he will attempt to set out his vision for a future Labour government. More

Boris Johnson is facing fresh questions about alleged Covid rule-breaking amid claims he failed to self-isolate last January after coming into close contact with a Downing Street aide who later tested positive for the infection.The prime minister stood near No 10’s videographer on 31 December 2020 while recording his official new year message as the UK was about to be hit with its second wave of the virus, sources told the Daily Mirror.The videographer tested positive for Covid after the message was recorded. They informed No 10 officials and other staff members in the room were asked to self-isolate for 10 days, but the PM was not.A Downing Street spokesperson insisted that Mr Johnson did not break any regulations because social distancing measures were followed throughout the recording.But photos of the recording posted on the image-sharing website Flickr may raise questions about whether or not Mr Johnson did in fact maintain a two-metre distance between himself and the videographer, as set out in official guidance.A source told the Mirror that the videographer, who was not wearing a face mask, stood “face-to-face” with the PM for around 15 minutes The source also suggested Mr Johnson and the aide stood less than 2m apart during the recording.Official guidance at the time outlined that anybody who came within two metres, for more than 15 minutes, of somebody who later tested positive for Covid were required to self-isolate.Less than a week after the recording took place England was plunged into its third national lockdown as Covid cases soared and hospitals across the country began to fill up with the sickest patients.A Downing Street spokesperson said: “The prime minister was socially distanced from the individual who subsequently tested positive and the duration of the filming was shorter than 15 minutes.“This has been reaffirmed by those present. He was not advised to isolate as the rules did not require him to do so.” More

Keir Starmer will present himself as a “serious” leader for a Britain facing deep problems, in a speech attacking the Boris Johnson as “a branch of the entertainment industry”.Buoyed by a collapse in Tory support in the polls, the Labour leader will use a New Year address to promise voters a better country “based on security, prosperity and respect”.Sir Keir will accuse the prime minister – rocked by accusations of sleaze and of lockdown-busting No 10 parties – of being “unworthy of your trust” and of leading a government whose “incompetence is becoming plain”.And he will paint a picture of a Britain about to enter a cost-of-living crisis, even when the immediate challenge of defeating the Omicron variant of Covid fades.“As we begin this new year, Britain has entered a new phase,” he will say, speaking in Birmingham, where the Commonwealth Games will be staged later this year.“The cost of living is increasing. Energy bills are going up; wages are stagnant. Tax rises are coming in April.“Too many people do not feel safe in their streets. And good luck to anyone trying to get a quick GP appointment.”In his Labour conference speech in September, Sir Keir first hardened his criticism of Mr Johnson’s leadership style – branding him “a trickster” and “a showman”.In Birmingham, he will step up the attack and urge voters to embrace his sober style instead, saying: “I don’t think politics is a branch of the entertainment industry. I think it’s the serious business of getting things done.”The speech comes after Labour opened up a six-point lead over the Conservatives, with its leader – for the first time for more than a decade – seen as the more capable prime minister.Sir Keir finally has the shadow cabinet he wants in place, believing the promotions of Yvette Cooper (home affairs), Wes Streeting (health) and Bridget Phillipson (education) give him a government-in-waiting.His attacks have started to hit home, but Labour is still failing to win over enough disenchanted Tory voters – who remain undecided – and he is under pressure to set out policy detail.Sir Keir will nod to the traditional Labour voters the party needs to win back by praising the Queen, in her platinum jubilee year, and by calling himself “a patriot”.“This country has presented me with great opportunities. It’s a great place to live,” he will say.“But I don’t think you cease to be a patriot because you notice your country has flaws.“On the contrary, the reason we in this party want to correct those flaws is precisely because we are patriotic. I came into politics to make things happen not just to talk about them.”Sir Keir will add: “The Britain I want is a country in which those who contribute get something back.“Because 2022 is also the first year in which we need to tackle some big challenges: repairing after the pandemic; combating the climate crisis; making Brexit work.” More

Hundreds of homeless people are being told by councils to sleep on the streets first if they want housing help under opaque government rules, The Independent has learned.Charities say the guidance used to assess people asking for accommodation is resulting in some being turned away at the housing office and told to “bed down” on the streets so they can be picked up by outreach teams.The situation – branded “appalling” and “utterly unacceptable” by campaigners and MPs – also means that people who are afraid to sleep on the streets are sometimes not picked up by rough sleeping teams at all, with women who fear being sexually assaulted particularly affected.Housing charity Shelter says the problem is systemic, and that its helplines frequently hear from people who are left without accommodation because they cannot be “verified” as rough sleepers by their local authority – including during the Covid lockdown, when they were supposed to be offered a place to stay under the “Everyone In” scheme. Even those who do bed down on the street are sometimes missed by the overstretched and under-resourced council teams who are supposed to find them and take them in. The approach varies by local area, with government guidance on the matter opaque. Labour said the government should step in to make clear that people should not be left until they are desperate to be offered help. “No one should have to render themselves destitute before they’re able to access support,” Sarah Owen, the shadow minister for homelessness, told The Independent. “People should be able to get help before they reach crisis point so we can protect some of the most vulnerable of rough sleepers, particularly women. More

More than half of black children in the UK are growing up in poverty, after a huge increase since the Conservatives came to power, a new analysis says.They are also more than twice as likely to be living below the breadline as white children, according to the study of the numbers in “relative low income”.In 2010, 42 per cent of black youngsters were growing up below the benchmark – but this had risen to 53 per cent in 2019-20, the most recent year for which data is available.Because the black population has risen sharply, the numbers in poverty have more than doubled from 200,000 at the start of the last decade to more than 410,000.Labour seized on the figures to call on Boris Johnson to stop dragging his heels on action to “tackle structural racial inequality at source”, through a new Race Equality Act.The party’s own report last year, by Doreen Lawrence, called for a national strategy to tackle health inequalities and mandatory ethnicity pay gap reporting – but no measures have followed, it said.“The Conservatives should be ashamed that more than half of Black children are growing up in poverty this Christmas – more than double the number when they took office,” said Anneliese Dodds, Labour’s equalities spokeswoman.“There is little wonder that child poverty has skyrocketed over the last decade when Conservative ministers have done so little to tackle the structural inequalities driving it.”The party used government data on households living below 60 per cent of median income and population statistics to produce its analysis.The proportion of Pakistani children below the breadline has also risen since the Conservatives gained power – from 50 per cent to 55 per cent, it said.Some 61 per cent of Bangladeshi children living in poor households – the same figure as in 2010 – while the proportion has fallen for Indian youngsters (from 34 per cent to 27 per cent) and for Chinese children (from 47 per cent to 12 per cent).For white children, the share has risen from 24 per cent to 26 per cent – and is the highest overall cohort, at 2.9 million children.A government spokesperson pointed instead to separate figures showing that, in 2019-20, there were 300,000 fewer children in absolute low income than in 2010.People can rise above the threshold if their incomes rise, while remaining in relative poverty – the more commonly used measure – if other people also become better off.The spokesperson told The Guardian: “The latest official figures show there were 300,000 fewer children of all backgrounds in poverty after housing costs than in 2010 and we continue to provide extensive support to reduce this number further.” More

Boris Johnson says no new Covid restrictions are necessary at present, insisting his existing plan B measures are the “right” approach.The government intends to “continue with path that we’re on”, the prime minister said – arguing the current curbs are sufficient, despite the rapid spread of the Omicron variant.Mr Johnson ducked an invitation to say the end of the pandemic is in sight, saying: “It will be absolute folly to say that this thing is all over bar the shouting.”But he said: “We have got plan B in place – people should never forget that.”And he added: “The way forward for the country as a whole is to continue with the path that we’re on.“We’ll keep everything on the review course we keep all measures under review, but the mixture of things that we’re doing at the moment is, I think, the right one.”The comments, on a visit to a vaccination centre, come ahead of a review of plan B – widespread mask-wearing, Covid passes to enter crowded venues and work-from-home guidance – on Wednesday.They suggest those measures will remain in place, but that England will continue to hold fire on the sorts of further curbs in place in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.At least half a dozen of NHS trusts have declared critical incidents, as the health service battles what one called an “unprecedented” staffing crisis.But the prime minister said: “No matter how incredibly transmissible Omicron is – and there’s no question it really spreads very, very fast – it is different from previous variants.“And it does seem pretty conclusively to be less severe than Delta or Alpha, it is putting fewer people into ICU [intensive care units] and, sadly, the people who are getting into ICU are the people who aren’t boosted, so get boosted.”However, speaking at the hub at Stoke Mandeville Stadium in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, Mr Johnson admitted “considerable” pressure on the NHS will continue for the “next couple of weeks and maybe more”.“There’s no question Omicron continues to surge through the country”, he said, but insisted help with staffing problems is being provided.The government would “help the NHS with their staffing requirements, and we’re looking at what we can do to move people into those areas that are particularly badly affected”.The prime minister appeared to reject copying the US by cutting the isolation period for people who test positive for coronavirus to five days, warning: “We don’t want to be releasing people back into the workplace when they’re still infectious.“And the risk is you would increase the numbers of people going back into the workplace who are infectious by a factor of three.“So you might perversely have a negative effect on the workforce if you see what I mean, so that’s the argument we’re looking at.” More

Boris Johnson does not “seem to care” about the peace deal in Northern Ireland and is putting it at risk with his Brexit stance, one of its architects says.Jonathan Powell, Tony Blair’s chief negotiator, hit out at the prime minister and David Frost – his former Brexit minister, who quit last month – for “sacrificing all the work” to achieve the Good Friday Agreement.The former top No 10 aide warned Northern Ireland’s devolved government could collapse because of the turmoil, saying: “You have to face up to the fact that Brexit requires someone to get hurt.”And he told The Guardian: “What worries me is the casual political vandalism. They really don’t seem to care.“I mean, the damage they are doing to the very fragile political settlements in Northern Ireland, by posturing on things like the European Court of Justice (ECJ), which do not matter to voters in Northern Ireland.“They may matter to Boris Johnson and some supporters [in the government] and the ideological base.“But is it really worth sacrificing all the work that previous generation of politicians put into the Northern Ireland peace process on ideological altar of the ECJ?”The criticism comes after Lord Frost made stripping EU judges of the power to oversee the Northern Ireland Protocol a red line in continuing negotiations, although he was then forced to soften that stance.He and Mr Johnson have also repeatedly threatened to trigger Article 16 of the Protocol, because of Unionist anger over the trade barrier created in the Irish Sea, but have not done so.Mr Powell also raised the alarm over a future poll on reuniting Ireland which, under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement, will take place if there is clear support for it.“Imagine if you have a border poll on a united Ireland and 48 per cent for remaining in the United Kingdom, a bit like the Brexit referendum,” he said.“People don’t want to address that problem. I understand. But it’s the fear of that that’s causing the trouble.”Mr Powell said he did not expect a return to The Troubles of the pre-Good Friday Agreement era, but warned Brexit created a permanent division in Northern Ireland.On Sunday, the leader of the Democratic Unionist Party, said the government had to make progress in reworking the Protocol by the end of this month.“January is going to be an absolutely crucial month,” said Jeffrey Donaldson, insisting Article 16 should be triggered if the deadline is missed.“If we don’t get rapid and decisive progress, and one side or the other is kicking the can down the road, this will have major implications for the stability of the political institutions in Northern Ireland.” More