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Thursday 11 June 2020 10:51
The UK has suffered more coronavirus deaths than many other nations because it is a “global travel hub” attracting people from all over the world, communities minister Simon Clarke has claimed.
It comes as Boris Johnson faces growing calls to scrap the two-metre rule. The prime minister is said to want to end the current social distancing rule by September at the latest to help schools reopen fully.
Elsewhere, health secretary Matt Hancock is expected to reveal the first data on the NHS test and trace system. It follows Mr Johnson’s announcement that single people in England will be allowed to form “support bubbles” from Saturday.
Gove claims CBI ‘in favour’ of no extension to transition period
Cabinet Office minister Michael Gove has suggested the hugely influential Confederation of British Industry (CBI) is “in favour” of no extension to the post-Brexit transition period beyond 31 December.
He told the Commons: “I know that businesses … want uncertainty to be removed. That’s why we’re clear that we will end the transition period on the 31st of December, and it is a position that I also understand now the CBI are in favour of.”
However, the most recent remarks by CBI director general Carolyn Fairbairn suggest the opposite.
Fairbairn, the outgoing boss of the group,
told the BBC: “The resilience of British business is absolutely on the floor.
“The firms that I speak to have not a spare moment to plan for a no trade deal Brexit at the end of the year – that is the common sense voice that needs to find its way into these negotiations.”
And yet Fairbairn did say only last week: “Business does not have any interest in delaying that because that is uncertainty magnified.”
A&E attendances down – ‘likely due to coronavirus’
A&E attendances at hospitals in England were down 42 per cent last month compared with a year ago, new figures show.
A total of 1.3 million attendances were recorded in May 2020, down from 2.2 million attendances in May 2019.
NHS England, which published the figures, said the fall was “likely to be a result of the
Covid-19 response” – an indication that people have continued to stay away from A&E departments because of the coronavirus outbreak.
Jenrick won’t turn up to answer questions about approval for Tory donor’s scheme
Cabinet minister Robert Jenrick is refusing to turn up in the House of Commons this morning to answer questions about his approval of a billionaire Tory donor’s property scheme.
Labour attempted to summon the communities secretary to defend the decision – subsequently ruled unlawful – by tabling an urgent question. But but Jenrick’s department is sending a junior minister instead.
It follows a donation by Richard Desmond to the Conservatives two weeks after Jenrick overruled one local authority to approve an apartment complex in east London proposed by Desmond’s company.
Rory Stewart is trending
The remarks made by Professor Neil Ferguson – stating that had Britain moved into lockdown a week earlier “we would have reduced the final death toll by at least half” – has led a lot of people to dig out clips of Rory Stewart offering very strong warnings in March.
The former Tory leadership candidate – who recently dropped out of the London mayoral race – is now trending on Twitter.
It’s worth remembering the very specific recommendations Stewart offered on 9 March shortly after health secretary Matt Hancock told the House of Commons: “The scientific advice is clear – acting too early creates its own risks, so we will do what is right to keep people safe.”
Stewart said: “The government has made a serious mistake today. They should be acting much more aggressively to contain coronavirus.
“Schools should be shut now … All medium and large gatherings should be cancelled. All passengers coming from hotspots should be tested and quarantined.”
Boris Johnson did not announce lockdown measures until 23 March.
This is how the debate played out on 9 March:
Heathrow blames quarantine for grim picture
Britain’s busiest airport is blaming the government for prolonging “grim” results of the coronavirus pandemic. Heathrow Airport has reported passenger numbers in May “at an all-time low,” down 97 per cent compared with the same month in 2019.
The west London hub has warned that its employment levels are “no longer sustainable” because of the government’s new policy mandating 14 days of self-isolation for arriving travellers.
“In line with this decline, the airport has begun to restructure its frontline roles, having already cut one-third of managerial roles,” it said in a statement.
Scientific adviser rejects PM’s claim it’s ‘too early to judge ourselves’
Boris Johnson was unwilling to share any regrets about his handling of the coronavirus crisis at Thursday’s Downing street press conference. “It’s too early to judge ourselves”, the PM said.
Not so, says Stephen Reicher – a social psychologist on the Sage subcommittee for behavioural science.
He has urged those in government to follow England’s chief medical officer Chris Whitty and assess their mistakes to avoid repeating them throughout the pandemic.
Professor Whitty admitted the failure to have mass testing in place early in the crisis was the largest of “a long list” of regrets. He said it left the nation “trying to see our way through the fog”.
No surprise we were not quick into lockdown, says expert
Asked if he believed the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) got it wrong about lockdown timings, Professor Mark Woolhouse, of Edinburgh University, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “No, I don’t.”
The epidemiologist added: “I’m not on Sage, so I can’t speak for the processes that led to that advice. The timing of an intervention for an epidemic like this is extremely complicated.
“Lockdown is a very drastic measure, so it is no surprise that governments around the world have been very reluctant to implement it.”
He added: “The problem is, from my point of view, the scientific advice – and this comes all the way back to the World Health Organisation – is the only option we are giving our governments in lockdown. That is an extremely crude way to deal with an epidemic of this nature.”
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer, writing in The Telegraph this morning, repeated some of the criticisms of the government’s handling of the schools’ reopening he made during PMQs yesterday.
He said the current problems were “entirely foreseeable” and criticised the PM for failing to meet with opposition parties to put together a plan, saying: “There was no plan, no consensus, no leadership.”
“We now have the ridiculous situation where next week betting shops and theme parks will open, but parents are not clear when their children will go back to school,” he said.
“The longer schools are shut, the greater the damage to children’s wellbeing and education and the increasing pressure on parents who are having to juggle childcare and work commitments.
“The warning from the Children’s Commissioner a few days ago could not have been starker: a generation of children now risk losing out on over six months of education.”
‘Support bubbles’ add to coronavirus lockdown confusion
From Saturday, the government says people who live alone will be able to form a “support bubble” with one other household.
But that’s not all that’s changing.
The Health Protection Regulations – which allow police to enforce lockdown conditions – are being rewritten for a fourth time to take account of the change.
Our home affairs correspondent Lizzie Dearden has taken a look at the added complexity to the rules.
Minister blames high death toll on Britain being ‘global travel hub’
Britain has suffered far more coronavirus deaths than many other nations because it receives so many international travellers, a government minister has claimed.
Communities minister Simon Clarke hit back at growing criticism that the lockdown came too late by arguing it was explained by the UK’s unique vulnerability.
“The truth is that Britain was always going to be hugely exposed to this virus because of some the features of our society,” the local government minister said. “We are a global travel hub – we were always going to face big challenges.”
However, Clarke rejected a suggestion that was further proof that strict quarantine rules on travellers should have been imposed in March, instead of only in mid-June.
He argued that requiring travellers to isolate for 14 days now was “proportionate in terms of trying to maximise savings of lives and the economy”.
Matt Hancock to reveal test and trace data
Health secretary Matt Hancock is expected to reveal the first data on the new NHS test and trace system, so we’ll finally get a chance to see how well it may be working.
The Department of Health publishes details on the amount of contact-tracing happening since the scheme was launched on 28 May, while Hancock is expected to be doing the 5pm Downing Street press conference.
Don’t expect many details about the app, still being trialled on the Isle of Wight. Hancock told a technology conference on Wednesday he did not know when it would be rolled out across the country. He also claimed human beings were better at contact-tracing than mobile apps.
Labour criticism ‘in poor taste’, claims minister
Asked about opposition criticism that the government didn’t act fast enough on lockdown measures, the communities minister Simon Clarke told the BBC: “I think what we did was that we acted in good faith to try and save both lives and livelihoods.
“I think that’s been the consistent theme of our approach to this crisis. So, there is a lot of being wise after the fact.
“I do think that for Labour to try and politicise it in that way, on that issue, feels in poor taste. I don’t recall, frankly, the opposition adopting a hard and fast line that we should be entering full lockdown.”
Asked if the tide had been turned on coronavirus, Clarke said: “I think it has. I think if you look both at the number of new infections and new deaths, they are coming down sharply.”
Black female MPs condemn racist abuse and death threats
Black women members of parliament have condemned a deluge of racist abuse and death threats they have suffered after voicing support for Black Lives Matter rallies.
Politicians and campaigners say the vitriol directed at the MPs for backing the protests illustrates why they are necessary. One MP, Dawn Butler, said she had received emails wishing her physical harm.
Fellow Labour MP Bell Ribeiro-Addy The Independent: “The backlash against Black Lives Matter demonstrators and black MPs who’ve come out in support of direct action is another reminder of why these protests had to happen in the first place.”
Our women’s correspondent Maya Oppenheim has more details:
We need ‘can do’ approach to school reopening, say chief inspector of schools
There needs to be a more “can do” approach to reopening schools from government and the education sector, Ofsted’s chief has suggested.
Chief inspector of schools Amanda Spielman told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “I would like to hear a much more optimistic approach. I think it should be about what we can do, not about what we can’t do.”
Spielman said: “Many schools are already showing that within the public health guidance that sets the expectation for these bubbles of 15 children there’s a great deal that can be done.
“It is also important to remember that within the bubbles social distancing is an aspiration, not an absolute expectation.”
She said of schools reopening: “The risk to children themselves is very low indeed and those in education should take some confidence from that.
“It’s about starting from the position of seeing what can we create, how far we can go?”
Johnson ‘to scrap two-metre distancing rule in bid to reopen schools’
The prime minister wants to end the two-metre social distancing rule by September at the latest to allow schools to fully reopen for the new academic year, according to reports.
Johnson has told ministers he wants to change the rule within weeks, possibly to bring the UK into line with World Health Organisation guidelines advising people keep a distance of one metre, according to The Telegraph.
The news comes after the government’s chief scientific officer, Sir Patrick Vallance, suggested the two-metre social distancing measure was not a “scientific rule”.
Asked at Wednesday’s Downing Street briefing whether the restriction may be changed to one metre as schools try to welcome back pupils, Sir Patrick said: “It is not a rule, it is not a scientific rule – it is a risk-based assessment on when risk reduces.”
Some Tory MPs want the rule ditched or changed imminently to help pubs, restaurants and shops revive themselves this summer.
Iain Duncan Smith said the hospitality sector “simply can’t make a living at two metres”, while Damian Green told Newsnight ditching the two-metre guidance would be the “single biggest change” ministers could make in the weeks ahead.
PM lets single people form ‘support bubbles’
Lovers who have been kept apart by lockdown will be able to spend the night together again, after Boris Johnson announced the latest relaxation to social contact rules.
The rule change – which comes into effect in England only at one minute past midnight on Saturday morning – applies only where an adult is living alone or with children aged under 18. In these cases, the single-adult household can form a “support bubble” with one other household of any size.
It’s characterised in many this morning’s papers as the end of the “sex ban” since no social distancing is necessary when a bubble is formed.
However, people who are shielding cannot form a bubble and anyone developing symptoms of the coronavirus means everyone in a bubble will have to self-isolate for 14 days.
Good morning and welcome to The Independent’s live coverage of events at Westminster and beyond.
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