Truss said ‘staged’ approach could be challenged by WTO

More now on the letter Liz Truss wrote to chancellor Rishi Sunak and Cabinet Office minister Michael Gove expressing her “key areas of concerns” on the government’s Brexit border plans.

In the email, first published by Business Insider, the international trade secretary warned the UK would “be vulnerable to WTO challenge” over its “staged” approach to border policy – because it would temporarily give the EU preferential treatment in the absence of a trade deal.

Gove backtracked last month over plans to immediately introduce full border checks when the transition ends on 31 December and instead said Britain would “phase” in the changes over six months.

But Truss was said to have asked for “assurances” that the UK will deliver full border controls at ports by July next year and that plans are in place from January “to mitigate the risk of goods being circumvented from ports implementing full controls”.

Truss also reportedly warned of angering unionists in Northern Ireland by delivering the “high-risk” dual tariff system on all imports to the nation on 1 January. “This is very concerning as this may call into question NI’s place in the UK customs territory,” she said, according to the report.

Former Labour communications chief Alastair Campbell is among those amazed by the uncertainty which still remains. “These charlatans are destroying one of the greatest countries in the world, and they’re not even clear why,” he tweeted.

‘I can only apologise’: Sunak says sorry to freelancers

Yet more from Rishi Sunak as he continues his round of morning interviews. The chancellor csaid more than a million businesses had benefited from government financial support during the crisis – but apologised to those who had not been reached.

He told Times Radio: “Over a million businesses have benefited, for example from the furlough scheme a million businesses have accessed some of our loans, almost a million businesses have got access to cash grants or business rates holidays.

“So clearly the scale of what we’re doing is reaching a lot of people. Is it going to reach absolutely every single person and every single company in exactly the way they would like? I’m sure not and I can only apologise for that.”

He also apologised to freelancers who feel left behind by the support schemes. “Does everyone feel that they’ve been helped in the way that they would like to have been? Of course not and I can only apologise for that.”

Sunak defends ‘broad offer’ to firms to keep on furloughed staff

Chancellor Rishi Sunak told BBC Breakfast he could not place a figure on an “acceptable” number of job losses.

He said: “Very clearly, every person who loses their job is a tragedy. That’s why I acted yesterday with a comprehensive plan to protect and support as many jobs as possible.

“If you’re asking me ‘can I protect every single job’ of course the answer is no. ‘Is unemployment going to rise, are people going to lose their jobs?’ Yes, and the scale of this is significant.

“We are entering one of the most severe recessions this country has ever seen. That is of course going to have a significant impact on unemployment and on job losses.”

Sunak was asked about why the job retention bonus had not been more targeted and said: “I actually think it will make a significant difference, it is something that people were actually interested in calling for.

“Given the income distribution of those on furlough, we know that £1,000 can be a significant reward and incentive to employers to successfully bring staff back and continuously employ them. I think actually having a broad offer to all those 9 million people is the right thing to do.”

He added: “I would make the same decisions again and I’m sure if we had a more targeted approach in this instance you’d probably have me on this show saying ‘Well, why are these people excluded?’”

UK entering ‘very significant recession’, admits Sunak

Chancellor Rishi Sunak has said jobs are at risk unless economic activity returns to normal.

He told Sky News: “We won’t know the exact shape of that recovery for a little while – how will people respond to the new freedoms of being able to go out and about again … But unless activity returns to normal, those jobs are at risk of going which is why we acted in the way that we did.”

Sunak admitted he was “anxious” about the state of the economy, and that the UK was “entering into a very significant recession”.

Chancellor taking ‘computer says no’ approach to support scheme, says Labour

Labour’s shadow chancellor Anneliese Dodds said Rishi Sunak has given “a lot of excuses” for not expanding economic recovery schemes to support more people.

She told BBC Breakfast: “Two things need to change, first of all we shouldn’t still be having this ‘computer says no’ response from the chancellor.

“Whenever these matters have been raised he said there is a need for speed when the different systems were set up, the furlough scheme and the self-employed scheme, that you can’t possibly include everyone at the beginning and he repeated that again yesterday.

“I’ve said to him and Labour said back to him that these systems have been created now, there is more scope in the system to be fitting them to people’s circumstances.”

She added: “It’s a complicated area but it’s not beyond the wit of man to sort out solutions to this.”

Dodds told the Today programme said the government is taking a “one-size fits all” approach in its incentive scheme to persuade employers to keep on furloughed staff beyond October.

Dodds continued: “The big issue for the chancellor is he’s assuming, it seems, that as people come out of those sectors that they will rapidly be able to be re-employed.”

Taxi drivers could be part of testing expansion, suggests top Tory MP

Ahead of the publication of weekly test and trace data, former health secretary Jeremy Hunt has suggested taxi drivers and people arriving at airports as well as NHS staff could be subject to mass testing in efforts to identify asymptomatic people and their contacts.

Hunt, now chair of the health and social care committee, said certain groups within the population, as well as people in particular parts of the country, could be tested to try to better track Covid-19 infections.

Speaking during an online conversation with Royal Society of Medicine president Professor Sir Simon Wessely on Wednesday, he said: “I think looking at healthcare staff, looking at taxi drivers is another group, airport arrivals is another group.

“I think we need to think about mass testing amongst groups of the population as well as parts of the country like Leicester and so on, as our best way of finding out where the asymptomatics are and feeding them into the system so that their contacts can be isolated.”

Government has set aside £10bn for test and trace

The government has allocated £10bn of public money for spending on the much-criticised test and trace system for England, Treasury documents have revealed.

The sum, much of it going on contracts with private firms like Serco and G4S, amounts to more than 100 times Public Health England’s £90m annual budget for infectious diseases and was described as “extraordinary” by a member of the Independent SAGE group of scientists.

Labour demanded a full break-down of the test and trace budget to ensure that the money is being spent in “the most effective way to limit the spread of Covid-19”.

Thousands of EU nationals ‘barred from government support’

Thousands of EU nationals have been barred from accessing government support over the past year, and the figure is likely to have increased “dramatically” in recent months amid the coronavirus crisis, according to research.

A report by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) think tank found large numbers of EU migrants applying for universal credit were rejected because of the government’s “flawed” habitual residence test (HRT) – which requires claimants to prove they have a settled home in the UK.

An analysis of Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) figures by the think tank showed around 45,000 universal credit claims were closed because of HRT failures in the last 12 months of available data. This accounted for about 10 per cent of all those who took the test, around half of whom are estimated to be EU citizens.

The report states the number of claims will likely have increased “dramatically” due to Covid-19.

Our social affairs correspondent May Bulman has all the details:

Sir Mark Sedwill gets £250,000 ‘compensation’ package

Boris Johnson has authorised a payment of almost £250,000 “compensation” to Sir Mark Sedwill after he stepped down as cabinet secretary in mysterious circumstances.

In a personal minute published on Wednesday the PM said the UK civil service human resources department and legal advisors had been consulted about the £248,189 payment, which was “likely to be in the form of a pension contribution”.

It follows Sir Mark appearance at the national security committee, where he offered a warning to his successor, saying senior civil servants are now “fair game” for anonymous briefings in the press. “It is a regrettable feature of modern politics, I’m afraid,” he told MPs.

More details here:

Brexit border plans could be challenged by WTO, minister warns

Boris Johnson’s Brexit border plans may be vulnerable to international legal challenge and will help smugglers, the trade secretary has warned in a leaked cabinet letter.

Liz Truss wrote to chancellor Rishi Sunak and Cabinet Office minister Michael Gove saying she had “key areas of concerns” about the prime minister’s plans for Northern Ireland.

In the letter, obtained by the Business Insider website, the international trade secretary says the UK would “be vulnerable to WTO challenge” over the plan.

Downing Street did not deny the letter’s veracity but a spokesman said “we do not comment on leaks.”

Rachel Reeves, Labour’s shadow Cabinet Office minister, said: “This email confirms fears that several ministers have been making things up as they go with a lack of awareness of the real world consequences of border policies they’ve had four years to develop.”

Mini-Budget offers ‘no hope or support’ for self-employed, unions warn

The cost of dealing with the coronavirus crisis has risen to a staggering £190bn, according to the Treasury’s latest figures – after Rishi Sunak revealed a further £30bn worth of measures. It’s fair to say reaction to the chancellor’s pledges has been mixed. A mixed grill, if you will.

The offer giving diners 50 per cent off when eating out in August (up to £10 a head) makes all of today’s front pages, but Labour said it was distraction from the lack of substantial support. “We were promised a ‘New Deal’, but what we got was a ‘Meal Deal’.”

The VAT cut and £1,000 bonus for every employee firms keep on when the furlough scheme ends were largely welcomed. But the CBI said more grants and rates relief were “urgently” needed to keep companies afloat, while the unions and Federation of Small Businesses said the self-employed had been “overlooked”.

Mike Clancy, general secretary of the Prospect union, said the chancellor had “failed to acknowledge that there are some sectors that need extra support so they can retain viable jobs until they can reopen”.

He added: “The chancellor started his statement saying that ‘nobody will be left without hope’, but there was nothing in his new package for the millions of forgotten freelancers and others who have been left with no hope and no support for months.”

Good morning and welcome to The Independent’s live coverage of events at Westminster and beyond.