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      Boris Johnson has followed Covid rules ‘in his personal life’, says sister Rachel

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      Boris Johnson’s sister has claimed he followed all Covid rules “in his personal life” since the beginning of the pandemic.The prime minister has been under huge pressure following claims of social gatherings held at Downing Street, Conservative HQ and government departments while strict curbs were in place last year.Defending her brother, columnist and commentator Rachel Johnson said he had “dotted every ‘i’ and he crossed every ‘t’” when it came to restrictions with his own family.“Because he is my brother I have had to see him over the course of lockdown and I have to say every time I’ve seen him … if it was rule of six, he said, ‘We can only be six whenever we are’,” she told LBC.The prime minister’s sister added: “He dotted every ‘i’ and he crossed every ‘t’ – I promise he did.”Ms Johnson added that she did not think rule breaking was “going on in his personal life”, adding: “What was going on under his watch looked really bad.”Earlier this week the prime minister defended a photo of himself and staff with cheese and wine in the No 10 garden at a time of strict curbs on social gatherings last May. “Those were people at work, talking about work,” he said.The scale of damage done to the PM’s credibility on Covid by a series of revelations about gatherings and after-work drinks at No 10 last year was laid bare by Savanta’s latest survey for The Independent.Almost three in 10 (28 per cent) also said that they are less likely to follow Covid rules as a result of reports of Christmas parties at Downing Street.Meanwhile, the latest Redfield & Wilton Strategies poll found that majority of Tory voters at the last general election want Mr Johnson replaced as party leader and prime minister next year.Some 53 per cent of Tory voters from the 2019 election victory want him ousted, according to the poll for the MailOnline. It found that 27 per cent in favour of a change at No 10, and another 26 per cent “strongly” in favour of the idea.The PM has seen his personal ratings plummet and his party have lost their poll lead to Labour following the Owen Paterson scandal, claims of government gatherings held last year’s Covid curbs, and remaining questions over the funding of Mr Johnson’s flat.It emerged earlier this week that the Metropolitan Police has referred itself to the police watchdog over a complaint suggesting its handling of allegations of a party at Downing Street last Christmas could amount to “aiding and abetting a criminal offence”. More

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      Crisps, PS5s and petrol: The year the UK ran out of everything

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      Boris Johnson hailed 19 July 2021 as “Freedom Day”, easing the last of the social restrictions imposed on the British public since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic 16 months earlier and drawing a line under some of the darkest days in our recent history.The vaccine rollout had been a triumph, Covid-19 appeared to be on the ropes, Gareth Southgate’s boys had done us proud at Euro 2020 and a summer heatwave had descended. What could go wrong?That question was answered just three days later, when eerie photographs of barren supermarket shelves began to appear on social media, forcing both the stores themselves and government ministers to urge shoppers not to engage in panic-buying in response to the apparent shortage of everyday goods.The phenomenon felt like a return to the bad old days of March 2020 and the very beginning of the pandemic, when frantic consumers raced to gather up as many six-packs of toilet rolls and bottles of hand sanitiser as they could carry to ensure plentiful supplies at home should society indeed collapse in the manner of a Netflix zombie movie.This fresh instalment of hysteria was blamed initially on a “pingdemic”, an explosion of notifications from the NHS Test and Trace app advising employees to self-isolate for 10 days after coming into contact with someone who has tested positive for the virus and therein causing chaos at workplaces across the country.With no exceptions made and official policy still one of “contact isolation” rather than “contact testing”, the UK economy was apparently being hard-hit by staff absences in response to the smartphone-issued quarantine orders, a problem affecting every sector, from retail and hospitality to transport, tourism and manufacturing, causing shifts to be rescheduled and services to run late or be cancelled altogether.But supermarket aisles left empty for the want of stackers or stock would prove to be merely the most immediately visible symptom of a range of issues that had been festering and were beginning to surface.Given the highly intricate and interconnected nature of the global supply chain, in which outsourcing is common and a single product is seldom manufactured, assembled, packaged and shipped by one outfit alone, the chaos being wrought by Covid was not simply confined to Britain but playing out across the map, with sickness absences at factories anywhere potentially leading to bottlenecks and delays everywhere.The NHS app was retooled to be less sensitive on 2 August, meaning fewer employees were unable to work at home, but still the problems persisted, prompting the pundits to look a little deeper for the root cause.An underlying shortage of HGV drivers was also clearly playing a part, a long-term headache already exacerbated by Brexit and worsened by the complications associated with the pandemic.The UK haulage industry estimated that Britain had lost 25,000 European lorry drivers in the wake of the EU membership referendum as they were forced to return to their countries of origin by tighter visa rules and the loss of free movement of labour principles.The three successive national lockdowns imposed in response to the Covid outbreak meanwhile meant that as many as 40,000 applicants to the DVLA in Swansea hoping to take a lorry driver’s test had been unable to do so, their forms piled high and gathering dust.Throw in an ageing workforce and British hauliers were facing a shortfall of as many as 100,000 drivers.Iceland’s managing director Richard Walker told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme in late August that the lack of drivers had to be addressed by the government and was “impacting the food supply chain on a daily basis”.“We’ve had deliveries cancelled for the first time since the pandemic began, about 30-40 deliveries a day,” he said. “Things like bread, fast-moving lines, are being cancelled in about 100 stores a day.”Asked whether he blamed Brexit for the situation, Mr Walker did not hesitate to say yes, branding Britain’s decision to leave the EU “a self-inflicted wound”.His sentiments were echoed by other supermarket bosses, members of the Shadow Cabinet and, eventually, even by transport secretary Grant Shapps and the Office of Budget Responsibility, the latter pointing to a 15 per cent fall in British trade with Europe as a contributor to the shortages.For Trades Union Congress general-secretary Frances O’Grady, the rapid growth of zero hours contracts and the “casualisation” of work through the gig economy was another key factor.“It’s not just about pay and conditions,” she said. “It’s about the business models that we have seen mushroom over the past 10 or 20 years.“Supply chains are in peril. That should be a wake-up call for all of us. The solutions are quite simple. It’s about evening up that collective bargaining power and about treating people with dignity and decency at work.”When the problems began to manifest anew in the shape of the flash fuel crisis of late September and early October, prompting drivers across the country to queue around the block for access to desolate service station forecourts, Mr Johnson’s Cabinet was forced to act.It drafted in Army drivers to ferry petrol deliveries from distribution terminals to the pumps under Operation Escalin (a Brexit emergency backup plan hurriedly retrieved from a drawer), begged retirees to get back in their cabs and offered temporary visas to European hauliers, who were, understandably, not particularly inclined to help out.That episode – propelled to an extent by some unhelpfully alarmist media coverage, centred around the inevitable shots of snaking lines of traffic – did eventually ease, but not before post-Brexit Britain had been likened to “boycotted Cuba” by Europe’s newspapers.From the disastrous disappearance of Haribo to the nightmarish prospect of a world with no Irn-Bru, Walkers Crisps or Weetabix, here is a reminder of some of the key products we ran dry of in 2021, the year we went without.HariboOne of the first victims of the HGV driver crisis was the German confectioner, who first reported supply issues on 2 July before the extent of the problem became frontpage news – a dire turn of events for Tangfastics loyalists.Trade magazine The Grocer reported that Haribo had told its wholesale and retail customers that it was “faced with several challenges throughout our supply chain including a shortage of drivers” but was “working flat out to manage the situation”. 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      Social care workers will access fast-track visas for a year, government says

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      Health secretary Sajid Javid has announced social care workers will be given access to fast-track visas as the government added the sector to the shortage occupation list in an effort to fill “vital gaps”.The relaxation of immigration rules for the sector for a 12-month period comes after government advisers warned it was facing “severe and increasing difficulties” over staff shortages.In its annual report published last week, the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC), which briefs the government on immigration, advised immigration rules on care worker jobs should be relaxed “immediately”.The recommendation was sparked by preliminary findings from an independent review by the MAC on the effect the end of freedom of movement after Brexit is having on both the adult social care sector and its workers.Earlier this year, the government also announced it would be mandatory for social care workers to receive two doses of a Covid-19 vaccine despite warnings this could result in many leaving the sector.The MAC said the occupation should be on the government’s shortage occupation list, which details sectors where employers “face a shortage of suitable labour and where it is sensible to fill those shortages with migrant workers”.The advisers added that “Given the severe and increasing difficulties the sector is facing in terms of both recruitment and retention, we are recommending that care worker jobs immediately be made eligible for the health and care visa.” The committee said that while it did not believe immigration policy could solve all – or even most – of the sector’s workforce problems, it could “potentially help to alleviate the difficulties” in the short term.Announcing the change on Christmas Eve, the Department of Health and Social Care said the sector will now be placed on the shortage occupation list. It will stipulate an annual salary minimum of £20,480 in order for carers to qualify.The department added the change will allow “applicants and their dependents to benefit from fast-track processing, dedicated resources in processing applications and reduced visa fees” for a temporary period of 12 months.Mr Javid said: “It is vital we continue to do all we can to protect the social care sector during the pandemic and beyond.“These measures, together with the series of support packages announced since September, will help us ensure short-term sustainability and success for our long-term vision to build social care back better.”The home secretary, Priti Patel, added: “The care sector is experiencing unprecedented challenges prompted by the pandemic, and the changes we’ve made to the health and care visa will bolster the workforce and help alleviate some of the pressures currently being experienced.”Daisy Cooper, the Liberal Democrat health and social care spokesperson, said: “This measure is too little, too late for everyone who has had their visits to a loved one in a care home cancelled this Christmas. Staff shortages in care homes have been at crisis point for months. “When Boris Johnson delivered Brexit he pulled the rug from under the care sector’s workforce. Now, the paltry offer of a one-year visa will likely fail to attract the numbers of care workers we so desperately need. “We cannot afford another humiliating and damaging repeat of when a pitiful 27 EU lorry drivers applied for HGV visas in response to the driver shortage. The government needs to think again and offer three-year visas to carers with immediate effect.” More

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      Keir Starmer hints at informal pact with Liberal Democrats at next general election

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      Keir Starmer has signalled he could be open to informal pacts with the Liberal Democrats and smaller parties at the next general election in order to remove Boris Johnson from No 10 and deprive the Tories of a majority.The Labour leader’s comments come a week after the Lib Dems overturned a 23,000 majority in the ultra-safe Conservative seat of North Shropshire, dealing a significant blow to the prime minister’s authority.Earlier in the summer, Ed Davey’s party also stormed to victory in Chesham and Amersham, despite the Tories winning a majority of over 16,000 votes in the constituency in the 2019 general election.Admitting the sheer scale of the challenge his party faces at the next general election following its 2019 routing, Sir Keir hinted that he may refrain from piling resources into seats being heavily targeted by the Lib Dems.However, he dismissed the idea of a formal pact or “progressive alliance” – where parties would agree to stand down candidates in certain constituencies in order to give one anti-Tory candidate a better chance of claiming victory.“I do think we should have a Labour candidate that people can vote for wherever they live,” he told Times Radio. “And depriving them of that is not the right thing to do. There are also issues in relation to our rules.”But the Labour leader went on: “Given the size of the task we face, given my utter determination that we are going to get this over the line at the next general election, I am very clear as to what our target seats are.“I know where we have to win across the whole of the United Kingdom. And therefore, I will focus my party on those target seats in the places where we can win and we know we have to win.”Referring to recent by-elections where the Liberal Democrats won surprise victories in Tory strongholds, the Labour leader added: “If you take North Shropshire for example, that isn’t on my list of target seats.“That is not one of the seats that I ever thought we could realistically win. Chesham and Amersham, North Shropshire, are not on my list of target seats.“Am I pleased to see the Tories upended there? Yes, I am. But I have to take an approach, given the situation we’re in, which is very clearly focused on the route for the Labour Party to win power at the next election.”Sir Keir also stressed that he had to show Scottish voters that there was a “realistic prospect” of a Labour government, suggesting that many were motivated more by opposition to the Tories than by deep-rooted support for the SNP and independence.“The idea that, as you cross the border into Scotland, the only thing that people are concerned about is the constitutional question just isn’t my experience,” he said. “People are talking about the cost of living, they are talking about health.”Taking aim at the prime minister, whom he described as “dishonest”, the Labour leader also suggested that voters were now beginning to see Mr Johnson for “what he really is”.Talking about Mr Johnson’s response to the allegations about lockdown-busting Christmas parties in Downing Street during the winter of 2020, Sir Keir said: “I don’t think many people believe him. I certainly don’t.” More

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      Chief scientific adviser: Not Sage’s job to ‘spread gloom or give optimism’

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      The Government’s chief scientific adviser has defended the “the unenviable task” of epidemiological modellers during the Omicron outbreak as he said it was not their job to “spread gloom”.Sir Patrick Vallance said it was not the responsibility of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) “to take a particular policy stance or to either spread gloom or give Panglossian optimism”.The comments appeared to respond to criticism – including from some Conservative MPs – of Sage’s Omicron modelling as fear-provoking, with Sir Patrick warning those participating in the debate “need to consider all the data in the round, not only those parts that fit an argument while ignoring the rest”.“That is not science, even though it might sometimes make an entertaining read,” he continued in a piece written for The Times.Sir Patrick wrote science was “self-correcting” and “advances by overturning previous dogma and challenging accepted truths”.“Encouraging a range of opinions, views and interpretation of data is all part of the process. No scientist would ever claim, in this fast-changing and unpredictable pandemic, to have a monopoly of wisdom on what happens next,” he added.A widely reported statement from the SPI-M-O, a group of scientists who report to Sage, on December 18 warned hospitalisations could peak between 3,000 and 10,000 a day and deaths at between 600 and 6,000 a day based on models assuming no new restrictions were introduced.

      They do not, contrary to what you might have heard, only model the worst outcomesSir Patrick VallanceSir Patrick said modellers were “trying to model lots of different scenarios of how the wave of Omicron might grow, determine which factors are likely to have the biggest impact on spread and its consequences, and to assess how different interventions might alter the outcomes.“They do not, contrary to what you might have heard, only model the worst outcomes.”In a separate interview on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Christmas Eve, Dr Jenny Harries, the chief executive of the UK’s Health Security Agency and another key face of the government’s response to the Covid pandemic, was also pressed on criticism from some quarters of being “too gloomy”.“Those who know me know I’m a naturally optimistic individual — I usually hang on to the positives,” she replied. “But what we’ve seen with Omicron is something really quite unusual.”She pointed out that just a month ago, on 24 November, Omicron was designated a variant under investigation, adding: “What we’ve seen in that time is this particular variant take over effectively.” The comments from Sir Patrick follow an interview the scientist did with Radio 4 in October in which he said his job was “not to sugarcoat” reality.He said at the time: “My mantra for a long time during this (pandemic) has been… ‘You’ve got to go sooner than you want to in terms of taking interventions. You’ve got to go harder than you want to, and you’ve got to go more geographically broad than you want to.” More

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      ‘Serious threat’ to UK remains despite promising Omicron data, says Jenny Harries

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      Omicron still poses a “serious threat” to the UK despite a “glimmer of hope” in research showing people contracting the virus are less likely to need hospital care, Dr Jenny Harries has said.The remarks from the chief executive of the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) follows her stark warning last week that the variant was “probably the most significant threat we’ve had since the start of the pandemic”.In findings published on Thursday, the UKHSA estimated that someone with Omicron is between 31 and 45 per cent less likely to attend A&E and 50 per cent less likely to be admitted to hospital than an individual with the Delta variant.However, due to the sheer number of infections — yesterday the official data showed almost 120,000 new positive cases — it was warned a signifiant number of people could still become seriously ill and needing hospital treatment.Asked on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme whether the research on hospitalisations was enough to downgrade her warning to MPs last week, she replied: “There’s a glimmer of Christmas hope in the findings we published yesterday, but it definitely isn’t yet at the point where we could downgrade that serious threat.”Emphasising the preliminary findings published by the UKHSA involved “very small numbers”, Dr Harries said: “Critically what we’re seeing is Omicron largely in younger people — it’s only just now that the cases are starting to tip into the older population, particularly the 60 and 70-year-olds.“There are a number of different reasons why we need to continue to look at this data further.”She later added: “I don’t think we do know yet this is going to be a significantly less serious disease for the population, the older population that we are normally most concerned about in relation to serious disease and death”.With Boris Johnson yet to decide whether further Covid restrictions will be needed after Christmas in England, Dr Harries also suggested that minsters might consider the wider impact of the Omicron wave — rather than just the severity of the illness.Asked whether the government will have the information needed on Monday to make key decisions, she told the BBC that ministers were being kept abreast of the latest data on a daily basis and that will continue throughout the Christmas period. More

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      UK, EU, and US received more vaccines in six weeks than Africa did in the whole of 2021

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      When the seriousness of coronavirus became clear in early 2020 and work ramped up on manufacturing a vaccine, campaigners foresaw the issue of roll out inequality. Later in the year as news of vaccine efficacy dominated global headlines, they approached leaders and pharmaceutical companies to ensure low-to-middle-income countries would not be pushed out when demand for jabs peaked.“We were told which countries bought all of the vaccines in the first wave and were reassured that everyone else will get them in the next few months,” Nick Dearden, director of Global Justice Now, told The Independent. “It’s clear that’s not happening, especially as we need boosters… what that means is that vaccine inequality is deepening with every month that goes by.”New analysis by the People’s Vaccine Alliance (PVA) has shown the UK, European Union and US has received more vaccines in the last six weeks than the African continent has received throughout this year. According to the data, between 11 November and 21 December wealthier countries have gotten hold of 513 million doses, while African countries have acquired only 500 million doses over 12 months.Alongside these findings, figures from Our World in Data show 448.5 million people in high-income countries have received a booster while only 53.6 million people in low-income countries have received their first dose during the same period.The majority of Covid vaccines delivered to the African continent this year have been sporadic donations often close to their expiry date. This ad hoc approach has resulted in chaos upon delivery as underequipped healthcare services struggle to administer the vaccine.“When many countries receive these donations, they are in a huge batch … when you think about how difficult it is for high-income countries to organise a roll out, you can’t just dump a load of vaccines on low-income countries and expect they are going to reach people’s arms within a few weeks. They need to be able to plan and they need investment in their health centres,” says Dearden.During a meeting of G7 leaders in Cornwall this June, a pledge was made to deliver one billion vaccines to low-income countries over the next year but already those targets are being missed. While prime minister Boris Johnson described the move as a “big step towards vaccinating the world”, the UK has only donated 15 per cent of the 100 million doses it has promised. Vaccine hesitancy across the African continent has often been an issue of concern for global leaders. However, research carried out by the Partnership for Evidence-Based Response to Covid-19 in 19 African Union member states, showed 78 per cent of people surveyed were willing to get the vaccine, should it be made available. In May, 25 per cent of adults in the European Union (EU) said they were unwilling to take any Covid vaccine. According to the PVA just 8.6 per cent of people in African countries have been fully vaccinated.“We need three things [to improve vaccine inequality]. For countries that do have access to lots of manufacturing capabilities, they need to be sharing more doses more rapidly… Secondly, we need much more money to support roll outs in countries which have weaker healthcare systems… and thirdly, we need poorer countries to have their own capabilities to manufacture vaccines. Ninety nine per cent of Africa’s vaccines are imported,” says David McNair, executive director for global policy at the ONE Campaign.Several organisations have called on vaccine manufacturers like Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna to share their vaccine “recipe” with lower-income countries, rather than continue to make them dependent on donations, so far they have been reluctant to do so. According to the PVA, Pfizer, BioNTech and Moderna will make $34bn (£25bn) this year in pre-tax profits. More

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      Government threatened with legal challenge over ‘discriminatory’ Covid passes

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      A civil liberties campaign group has threatened the government with a legal challenge over the introduction of “discriminatory” Covid passes for large venues in England.It comes a week after Boris Johnson suffered the biggest rebellion of his premiership from nearly 100 Tory MPs over the certification — one of the key tenants of the government’s “plan B” strategy for dealing with the pandemic this winter.Despite the revolt, the scheme was introduced in England on 16 December, after it was passed with a majority of 243, with Labour backing the move.However, piling pressure on the prime minister to drop Covid passes, Big Brother Watch, which works to “roll back the surveillance state”, said that if Mr Johnson does not scrap the Covid passes “we will seek to make our case in court”.The group described the certification scheme, which requires members of the public to show either proof of a Covid-19 vaccination or a negative lateral flow test, as “draconian, discriminatory and pointless”.Under the the scheme, all visitors over the age of 18 entering venues such as nightclubs, dance halls and indoor events with 500 or more unseated attendees, have been required to show a Covid pass since last Wednesday.But expressing concern the documentation requirement breaches the Human Rights Act and equality laws, the civil liberties group claimed that the certification will “make society less free, less equal and less accessible for people”.Director Silkie Carlo added: “We face serious and evolving public health challenges. But Covid passes have been proven to fail in Scotland and Wales and will do nothing to protect people in England. This is safety theatre that carries real risk of harm, intrusion and division.“There are far more effective measures to keep people safe than excluding healthy people without the right papers from society”.“We urge the prime minister and health secretary to scrap mandatory Covid passes. If they don’t, we will seek to make our case in court.”In a pre-action letter, the group, which launched similar action against the Welsh government last month, claimed there was “no, or no sufficient evidence” for the introduction of Covid passes and suggested that equality considerations “do not appear to have been taken into account”.Big Brother Watch added that it will issue judicial review proceedings if it does not receive a “satisfactory” response from ministers by 6 January 2022.Speaking earlier this month, Mr Johnson said he understood the “legitimate anxieties colleagues have about restrictions on the liberty of people” when challenged by the Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer on the divisions within his party.However, the prime minister sought to defend the scheme, insisting the government’s approach in the face of the rapid spread of the Omicron variant was “balanced and proportionate and right”.The Independent has contacted the Department of Health and Social Care for comment. More