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As Boris Johnson roused the Tory party faithful in Manchester with his speech about economic growth and rising wages, 200 miles away food bank users were streaming in. “Things are more expensive,” said Joan, sitting amid rows of tins, pasta and other produce in Dad’s House, a charity that runs a foodbank in southwest London. “Things are great for people who are working and don’t see all this. Because I never used to see this.”She started coming to the food bank earlier this year after losing her job as a nanny.“I used to give things to a food bank. I never used to come here myself,” she said.In his widely criticised speech on Wednesday, the prime minister mentioned the word “growth” six times and twice praised Britain as the fastest-growing economy in the G7.The Conservatives had “fixed the economy”, he told party members, moments before promising: “We are going to fix this economy.”He also said the “present stresses and strains” of the economy – labour shortages, soaring household energy costs and warnings over food supplies – were “mainly a function of growth and economic revival”.But visitors to Dad’s House told The Independent the economy is not working well for them. “It’s hard to keep your head above the water,” said John Krell, who is retired. “We have gas and electric going sky-high.”The 70-year-old said he has bought a headtorch “like you would wear in the mine” and goes to bed at 7.30pm to avoid putting the lights on.“What a life,” he says. “Who would’ve thought that, years ago.” Azahia Atnane has not been able to find a job. Her husband works part-time as a waiter but would like to be full-time.“There is no employment,” she says. Now, she is bracing herself for the impact of the cut in Universal Credit as its £20-per-week extra – introduced during the pandemic – is scrapped.Food banks were preparing for a surge in demand as the change in Universal Credit came into force from Wednesday, amid warnings vulnerable people could be plunged into poverty “almost overnight”. Billy McGranaghan, the founder of Dad’s House, told The Independent there had already been an increase in users over the past month – ten to 15 more each week.Among the new users are young people who had lost jobs in hospitality, he said.In his Tory conference speech, Mr Johnson said the government was tackling what he described as the UK economy’s “long-term structural weaknesses”.He said the country was having a “change in direction” with a move to a “high wage, high skill, high productivity” economy. More

Food banks are expecting a surge in demand for their services and say vulnerable people will be plunged into poverty “almost overnight” because of a cut to Universal Credit.The £20-a week uplift, introduced at the start of the pandemic, is set to be scrapped despite fears hundreds of thousands of people will be “massively hit”. As an estimated six million of the UK’s poorest brace for the change to their incomes from Wednesday, groups that run food banks have shared their concerns over what this change will mean for their users. “We’re anticipating a huge surge in need for independent food banks as the impact of the cut to Universal Credit and cost of living increases take hold,” Sabine Goodwin from the Independent Food Aid Network told The Independent.“On top of this, many of our food banks are struggling to access food supply.” The co-ordinator at the group, which represents over 500 independent food banks in the UK, added: “It’s critical that the government reverses its decision on Universal Credit and ensures social security payments and wages match the cost of living so we can put an end to poverty and the need for food banks in the UK.”The Salvation Army also said it was bracing for a surge in demand for its food banks.“The government worked hard throughout the pandemic to protect people from financial hardship, but the loss of the furlough scheme and the Universal Credit uplift will plunge vulnerable people into poverty almost overnight,” Lieutenant-Colonel Dean Pallant from the charity and church said.The charity’s food bank in Keighley gave 3,600 people food parcels during the 12 months to March 2020, which members fear will get worse with the benefits cut. Meanwhile, Bradford Central Foodbank helped 2,500 people in just one month during the pandemic and manager Josie Barlow said many more will soon need support. She told the BBC: “People will be massively hit by the cut in Universal Credit. People going from £409 as a single person down to £323 a month. It is a 21 per cent cut in income.”She added. “Especially in winter with electricity bills, fuel prices are rising, that combined with the furlough scheme ending, it is going to really push so many more people to needing a foodbank.”Gary Stringer, a volunteer at the same foodbank who is on Universal Credit, told the BBC the weekly cut of £20 to the payment was a “big concern”. “I do worry about it because I’m trying to look for work at the moment. There is nothing available,” he said. From Wednesday, no assessments will include the uplift, meaning that from 13 October – a week later – no payments will be received that include the extra money.Boris Johnson is preparing to tell the Tory party conference his “levelling up” agenda is key to supporting left-behind communities.Ahead of this speech, Dominic Raab, the deputy prime minister, defended the £20 weekly cut.“Of course the emergency support we have provided was because of the pandemic,” he told Sky News. “As we come through the pandemic, with youth unemployment going down, employment going up, we need to transition. We don’t want to see people reliant on the welfare trap.”But the change has faced criticism from charities, think tanks and unions from across the political spectrum and calls for the government to U-turn on the decision.The Whitehawk Foodbank in Brighton called for the £20 top-up to be reinstated “immediately”. It said it gave out a “staggering 3,689 parcels” last year and was “concerned this will increase again”. The Trussell Trust, which has a network of hundreds of food banks in the UK, also said it wanted to see the decision to cut Universal Credit by £20 a week reversed. A government spokesperson told the BBC: “As announced by the chancellor at the budget, the uplift to Universal Credit was always temporary. It was designed to help claimants through the economic shock and financial disruption of the toughest stages of the pandemic, and it has done so.” They added: “Universal Credit will continue to provide vital support for those both in and out of work and it’s right that the government should focus on our plan for jobs, supporting people back into work and supporting those already employed to progress and earn more.”The Treasury has been contacted for comment by The Independent. Additional reporting by Press Association More

Ministers have been told that just 27 fuel tanker drivers have applied to work in the UK from the EU through the government’s emergency visa scheme which is designed to fix the country’s petrol shortages, according to a report.The Times has reported that there has been little interest in the visas available for HGV drivers in the fuel industry, raising questions over how many people will actually come to the UK to fill vacancies.Earlier this week, the government announced that 300 fuel drivers would be allowed to come to the UK from overseas “immediately” and stay until March, while a further 4,700 visas for foreign food truck drivers will be allowed from later this month until the end of February.There are now concerns among ministers that the failure to recruit drivers will lead to further delays in restocking service stations and to the government having to rely on the army for assistance for longer, according to The Times.“People don’t want to come unless it is a really attractive alternative,” Rod McKenzie, director of policy at the Road Haulage Association, told the newspaper.“You don’t give up a well-paid job for a better-paid job if it will only last a few months.”It came after health secretary Sajid Javid insisted on Saturday that he was “confident” that workers would come to the UK.“Of course there is competition for drivers – that’s taking place throughout Europe – but it is important that we try to do what we can,” Mr Javid told Sky News.“I am confident with the temporary visa changes that have been announced we will get more drivers.”On Monday, industry leaders warned that there would be gaps on supermarket shelves this Christmas due to shortages as chancellor Rishi Sunak argued that he could not “wave a magic wand” to make the supply chain problems go away.“We’re seeing supply disruption, not just here but in lots of different places, and there are things we can try and mitigate, and we are,” Mr Sunak told BBC Radio 4’s Today show.“But we can’t wave a magic wand. There’s nothing I can do about the decision by a country in Asia to shut down a port because of a coronavirus outbreak.”About 200 military personnel – half of them drivers – have been deployed to help deliver petrol to forecourts as about 22 per cent of filling stations in London and the southeast reportedly still do not have fuel.Additional reporting by PA More

The Metropolitan Police officer who murdered Sarah Everard worked as a guard at the Houses of Parliament, the force has confirmed.Scotland Yard said Wayne Couzens was deployed to armed static protection duties on the parliamentary estate on five occasions from February to July last year.Previously, the Met refused to go into detail about Couzen’s posting at Westminster, according to The Times. But his role was confirmed following inquiries by Sir Lindsay Hoyle, the Commons speaker.The force said Couzens moved to the Parliamentary and Diplomatic Protection Command in February 2020 and his primary role was to patrol diplomatic premises, mainly embassies.A senior parliamentary source told The Times they believed the Met had “deliberately tried to mislead the parliamentary authorities by claiming Couzens did not have a parliamentary pass [issued under his own name]”.Couzens, 48, was nicknamed “the rapist” by colleagues. He was said in court to have been “attracted to brutal sexual pornography” as far back as 2002.The police watchdog previously said he was linked to a flashing incident in 2015 and two more incidents just days before he killed Ms Everard.He used his warrant card to falsely arrest Ms Everard before he abducted, raped and murdered her.A senior parliamentary source told The Times Couzens was granted an access-all-areas pass while working at the Houses of Parliament.The revelation has sparked outrage among MPs. Labour MP Rosie Duffield said: “It’s chilling that someone whose nickname was ‘the rapist’ was guarding MPs when we are told that we are protected by a ring of steel.“Knowing now that we had a murderer in our midst, I’m sure all women working in parliament will want to see a thorough security review.”Mr Hoyle said: “Like everyone, I have been sickened by the depravity of Wayne Couzens – and heartbroken for the family of Sarah Everard.“I have asked the Met to meet me urgently to discuss how this person could have been deemed suitable for deployment here.“Further, I will be seeking reassurance that at no time was anyone on the parliamentary estate put at risk.”Additional reporting by PA More

The UK faces a shortage of pigs in blankets this Christmas as a lack of butchers threatens to disrupt supplies of pork, industry leaders have said.In the latest twist of the supply chain crisis hitting Britain in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic and Brexit, the government has said it is “working closely” with the pig industry to “address the pressures industry is currently facing”.As with the petrol shortages, which saw the military mobilised to drive petrol tankers, ministers are now reportedly mulling relaxing visa rules for up to 1,000 foreign butchers.The industry is short of some 15,000 workers, according to the British Meat Processors Association (BMPA), which has forced its members to just focus on keeping supermarkets stocked with basic cuts of meat.While supermarket shelves are already missing some pork products which have been rationalised, the butchers shortage also risks causing animal welfare issues on farms as mounting numbers of livestock await slaughter, raising the prospect of an imminent cull of 150,000 pigs.“We really should have been producing Christmas food from about June or July onwards this year and so far we haven’t, so there’ll be shortages of party foods and things like pigs in blankets. Anything that is labour-intensive work could see shortages,” a BMPA spokesperson told The Times.The industry body warned as far back as mid-August that shortages of “the more complicated lines like pigs in blankets and gammon roasts” already looked “inevitable”, with many meat companies already six weeks behind their Christmas production schedules.While Priti Patel, the home secretary, is reported to be against easing visa rules, the Home Office said it is “closely monitoring labour supply and working with sector leaders to understand how we can best ease particular pinch points”.With butchers already classed as skilled workers under the UK’s immigration system, ministers have discussed relaxing the requirement for them to speak a good level of English, according to The Times, which quoted a government: “We’re not going to return to freedom of movement by incrementally adding every sector to points-based immigration.”In addition to the 5,000 temporary visas to be issued to foreign HGV drivers, the government announced on Sunday it would also relax visa rules for 5,500 poultry workers, after the National Farmers’ Union (NFU) urged Boris Johnson to do so.Calling for an urgent meeting with Ms Patel and immigration minister Kevin Foster, NFU president Minette Batters warned a cull of up to 150,000 pigs was “potentially a week, ten days away”.“I do not feel anybody can preside over a welfare cull of healthy livestock. I don’t believe it has happened in the world before and it cannot happen now,” Ms Batters told the BBC.Lizzie Wilson of the National Pig Association said the shortage of butchers meant processors were operating at 25 per cent reduced capacity, leaving “about 120,000 pigs sat on farm currently that should have already been slaughtered, butchered, be within the food chain and eaten by now”.“It is getting to the point where we are saying to government if we don’t get some help soon we’re going to have to look at culling pigs on farm, because that’s our only option now,” she said, adding “there are some producers that have already had the conversation.”Just weeks ago, the prime minister insisted “Christmas is on”, following concerns about the supply of turkeys. Ministers were forced to strike a deal using taxpayers’ money to pay the operating costs of a major US-owned fertiliser manufacturer to ensure the supply of CO2 for the food sector.A spokesman for the Department For Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said: “We understand the importance of seasonal labour and we are aware of the challenges that the pig industry has faced in recent months because of the Covid-19 pandemic and labour shortages, and Defra has been working closely with the pig and processing sectors during this time. “We are keeping the market under close review and continuing to work closely with the sector to explore options to address the pressures industry is currently facing.”A Home Office spokesperson said: “Similar challenges are being faced by other countries around the world. We want to see employers make long-term investments in the UK domestic workforce instead of relying on labour from abroad. Our Plan for Jobs is helping people across the country retrain, build new skills and get back into work.“The government encourages all sectors to make employment more attractive to UK domestic workers through offering training, careers options wage increases and investment.”While the Covid pandemic has exacerbated labour shortages, Brexit and new immigration rules have also played a role, with the British Poultry Council warning last year: “The great British Christmas cannot survive without access to non-UK labour.”Additional reporting by agencies More

A number of experts and equality groups have accused the government of failing to protect high-risk ethnic minority groups during the Covid-19 pandemic while rates of vaccine hesitancy continue to grow among parts of these communities.The latest figure for hesitancy among Black or Black British adults is 21 per cent, according to the Office for National Statistics — an increase on previous figures — while among white adults it remains at four per cent. Hesitancy is also higher for adults identifying as Muslim (14 per cent) or “other” (14 per cent) for their religion, compared with adults who identify as Christian (4 per cent).Mistrust in Government and healthcare systems have been cited as key reasons for hesitancy while a recent study by University College London University College London suggested the importance of addressing racial discrimination more broadly in order to increase vaccine uptake amongst ethnic minority adults. Currently, people from these communities account for the highest proportion of intensive care patients since pandemic began, according to the latest data from the Intensive Care National Audit and Research Centre, while Covid safety measures were scrapped by the Government last month.Dr Zubaida Haque, a member of Independent SAGE, told The Independent that ministers have done little to mitigate the risks facing many despite extensive research highlighting the problems.“It’s almost a quadruple whammy – minority ethnic communities are more overexposed because of their circumstances, less protected in that they’re less likely to take up the vaccine because their fears and concerns are not being robustly addressed, then we’ve got higher infection rates and few mitigations,” she said. More

The Home Office has refused to disclose the legal basis on which it plans to use “pushbacks” in the English Channel to turn small boats around.It emerged last week that home secretary Priti Patel had ordered officials to rewrite the UK’s interpretation of maritime laws to allow Border Force to carry out the controversial practice, with members being given special training to turn around small boats.The plans were met with criticism from lawyers, cross-party MPs and charities, who warned that the policy would likely be unworkable and questioning the legal basis on which the practice could be carried out.The French interior minister said his country would not cooperate with the plan, saying it would “not accept any practices that are contrary to maritime law”.During a parliamentary evidence session on Wednesday, permanent secretary Matthew Rycroft confirmed that Border Force officers had been “preparing and trialling” the “new maritime tactic”, but that it had “not been deployed yet”.When asked by Conservative MP Tim Loughton whether the policy was legal, Mr Rycroft replied that there was a legal basis for it to be used “in certain circumstances”.Asked what this legal basis was, Mr Rycroft said that it was the advice from law officers to the government which he “must not disclose”.Pressed by Mr Loughton to refer to the international maritime legal basis on which they think it would be legal for the Home Office to use pushbacks, Mr Rycroft said: “There is a legal basis to operate this policy in certain circumstances. The legality depends on the circumstances.”Second permanent secondary secretary Patricia Hayes, who was also being questioned, said the Home Office did not want to provide detail on operations publicly so as not to give people smugglers arranging the boat crossings an advantage on tactics.In response, Mr Loughton said: “If you bring this into operation and a boat sinks as a result, you’ll be in front of this committee and various other committees having to explain exactly that.”Mr Rycroft also confirmed that the practice would only lead to a “small proportion” of small boats being turned back to France, later conceding it would be closer to 1 per cent than 49 per cent.Responding to the committee hearing, Steve Valdez-Symonds, Amnesty International UK’s refugee and migrant rights director, said Mr Rycroft’s answers “gave the impression that the government announced the pushback policy for its publicity value rather than to do anything useful to address the needs of those making these perilous crossings”.“Home Office officials have been put in the hopeless position of having to defend a ministerial policy which is life-threateningly dangerous and almost certainly unlawful,” he added.It comes after the Home Office’s assessment of proposed immigration and asylum reforms found there was “limited” evidence this would reduce the number of people trying to cross the Channel.The equality impact assessment for the Nationality and Borders Bill, published last week, states: “Deploying these measures does advance the legitimate aim of encouraging asylum seekers to claim in the first safe country they reach and not undertaking dangerous journeys facilitated by smugglers to get to the UK, though evidence supporting the effectiveness of this approach is limited.”The document also repeatedly states that any discrimination would be “objectively justified” as a “proportionate means” of achieving the policy objectives of the plans, namely to “deter illegal entry into the UK”. More

The UK is considering joining a trade partnership between the US, Canada and Mexico or an Asia-Pacific free trade group after Boris Johnson gave up on his dream of a bilateral deal with Washington. The prime minister accepted a direct free trade agreement (FTA) with the UK was not high on US president Joe Biden’s list of priorities after meeting with his American counterpart in the White House on Tuesday.The UK will instead look to improve trade links with the US by exploring other avenues such as inserting itself as the fourth member of the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) or joining the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), the Independent understands.We’ve taken a look at the two trade pacts and what they could mean for the UK.The Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) is a major free trade area including Australia, Canada, Japan and Singapore.The CPTPP was born out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a group promoted by then-US president Barack Obama as part of Washington’s increased emphasis on relations with Asia.Obama’s successor, Donald Trump, pulled out in 2017 and Biden has not rejoined the group.The UK revealed it was formally applying in January 2021 and negotiations began in June.The CPTPP, which took effect in 2018, includes agreements on market access, movement of labour and government procurement.The Department for International Trade said joining the trade group would cut tariffs on food, drink and cars and improve access to the markets of its members, such as Mexico, New Zealand and Vietnam.Other benefits are said to include easier travel between partnership countries and cheaper visas.If accepted, the UK would become the first European member, joining Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Brunei, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam.China has also applied in an effort to increase its influence over international policies, while Taiwan is hoping to join.If China joined, it would quadruple the total population within the group to some 2 billion people.Britain may also bid to join the trade partnership between the US, Canada and Mexico as a fourth member in the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA).USMCA came into effect in July 2020 as a replacement for the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta), which was torn up by Donald Trump.Covering areas ranging from motor vehicles and steel to agricultural produce and data transfers, Washington said the deal should boost US GDP by $68bn and generate 176,000 jobs.Britain already has trade agreements with Canada and Mexico. therefore the main benefits of joining would be linked to the US element of the deal.There has previously been no talk of extending the three-nation arrangement beyond the continent. More