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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

Defence Secretary Ben Wallace has ordered an investigation into a data breach involving dozens of Afghan interpreters who worked for British forces.More than 250 former workers seeking evacuation to the UK were mistakenly copied into an email from the Ministry of Defence asking for an update on their situation, the BBC reported.John Healey MP, Labour’s Shadow Defence Secretary, said: “We told these Afghans interpreters we would keep them safe, instead this breach has needlessly put lives at risk.“This is the second major data breach from the MoD this year, after sensitive documents were discovered at a bus stop in Kent in June. Clearly, the defence secretary needs to get his house in order.”A Ministry of Defence spokesperson said: “An investigation has been launched into a data breach of information from the Afghan Relocations Assistance Policy team.“We apologise to everyone impacted by this breach and are working hard to ensure it does not happen again.“The Ministry of Defence takes its information and data handling responsibilities very seriously.”One of the affected interpreters told the BBC that some others failed to spot the mistake and replied to the entire list with further personal details. The email was sent by the team in charge of the UK’s Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (ARAP), which has been dealing with claims of refuge since the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in August.Conservative MP Johnny Mercer said the treatment of Afghan interpreters had been “deeply shameful”.“In July, myself along with many others in defence asked the Defence Secretary and the Home Secretary to sort out the Arap programme,” he said.“They wrote a churlish letter back saying we were reacting to ‘significant misreporting’ and our concerns were ‘simply not true’.“I told them they would regret their childish approach to a genuine effort to protect those who had served in harms way on behalf of our nation.“Their hubris will cost lives; this latest episode will only accelerate that. Deeply shameful.” More

People on the poverty line will be forced to choose between heating and eating this winter because of a triple whammy in the cost of living, the government is being warned.Experts say that rising energy bills combined with the end of both furlough and the universal credit top-up risk creating a living standards crisis this autumn.Annual gas and electricity bills are expected to soar by up to £280 after wholesale energy prices shot up. The hike led suppliers to withdraw their lowest fixed-rate offers on Thursday.In addition, the government price cap on annual energy costs for households is due to rise next month, leaving the average dual-fuel deal at £1,277 a year. But comparison site The Energy Shop expects this to go up to £1,557.At the same time, the furlough scheme, which was established as a way to prevent employers having to lay off workers, winds down at the end of this month.And the £20-a-week universal credit uplift, brought in to help those receiving the benefit cope with the pandemic lockdown, is ending in early October.National insurance is also going up by 1.25 percentage points in April.Figures show that 1.6 million people were on furlough at the end of July, and chancellor Rishi Sunak has been warned that ending the universal credit uplift will result in the biggest ever overnight benefit cut, affecting millions of families.Ministers argue, however, that they have spent £400bn protecting jobs and livelihoods and supporting businesses and public services during the pandemic. The cost of gas is rising sharply due to higher demand brought about by the economic recovery after the pandemic. And a blaze in Kent, which this week knocked out a major cable bringing in electricity from France, is expected to affect supplies until March next year.Wes Streeting, the shadow child poverty secretary, said: “My gas and electricity bill is going up by an estimated £161.67 next year. I’ll manage – but what about working families who, under the Tories, will be clobbered by a £20-a-week cut to universal credit and a 10 per cent rise in national insurance?”Iain Porter, of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, said: “Families on low incomes are increasingly anxious about how they are supposed to make ends meet. The prime minister says he wants to unite and level up the country, but he cannot achieve this by cutting the incomes of around 5.5 million families in and out of work. “It’s not too late for him to heed all of the warnings and abandon this cut, or he will risk creating a living standards crisis this autumn.”Morgan Wild, head of policy for Citizens Advice, said: “Millions of people who are still struggling with the impact of the pandemic now face a barrage of fresh challenges. The cut to universal credit, end of furlough, and hike in energy prices will squeeze family finances to the limit.“Keeping the £20-a-week increase to universal credit is the single best way of supporting families through what will be an incredibly hard winter.”Garry Lemon, director of policy at the Trussell Trust, said: “We know many people in need of emergency food are also living in fuel crisis, and are already caught in impossible situations where their only option is to either feed their children or heat their home.”Former Labour leader Ed Miliband said the energy hikes showed the need to use more eco-friendly and secure energy sources.“We need the government to reassure households and businesses that they are working with all relevant bodies to ensure secure, affordable energy supplies.“They also need to recognise what this shows about the problems of government policy,” he said. “The best answer to these issues is to scale up and diversify our domestic energy sector, to shore up our security of supply and protect industry, including drawing on all possible zero-carbon sources of power.“This growing crisis also reinforces the urgent need to manage demand by upgrading and insulating houses across this country.“Instead, the Conservatives sold off the Green Investment Bank, blocked onshore wind power, cut subsidies for solar, and scrapped their flagship Green Homes grant.”A government spokesperson said: “The furlough scheme and the uplift to universal credit were always temporary. They were designed to help people through the financial disruption of the toughest stages of the pandemic, and as we look forward and get back to normal, it’s right that our economic support reflects this.“Universal credit continues to provide vital support for those both in and out of work, and we’re now focusing on our plan for jobs, getting people back into work, progressing and earning more.“The Warm Home discount scheme supports over 2 million low-income and vulnerable customers each year with their energy costs.”The government has previously said that children in households where every adult is working are five times less likely to be in poverty than those in households where nobody works, and that its jobs plan will help people to learn new skills and increase their hours or find new work. More