This article is from the source 'guardian' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.

You can find the current article at its original source at https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/live/2020/apr/14/coronavirus-uk-live-news-lockdown-extended-peak-dominic-raab-boris-johnson-latest-updates

The article has changed 23 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.

Version 18 Version 19
UK coronavirus live: Rishi Sunak gives government briefing as OBR says lockdown could shrink GDP by 35% UK coronavirus live: Rishi Sunak gives government briefing as OBR says lockdown could shrink GDP by 35%
(32 minutes later)
UK hospital deaths rise by 778 to 12,107 amid questions over care home figures; forecast says unemployment could soar by 2 millionUK hospital deaths rise by 778 to 12,107 amid questions over care home figures; forecast says unemployment could soar by 2 million
Q: The economic fallout from this will disproportionately hit the young. So is it fair to keep policies like the triple lock on pensions? The Welsh government has been heavily criticised for still only being able to carry out 1,300 Covid-19 tests a day.
Sunak says he cannot write future budgets today. But he will pay tribute to the young, whether it is people at school missing out on exams, or young people in the labour market. Young people have been volunteering, he says. He says this amounts to society coming together. The Tory shadow health minister in Wales, Angela Burns, said:
He says, whatever age people are, the government’s job is to provide economic opportunity. That might mean giving opportunities to start your own business. He will look at the plans in place to make sure they are the right ones, and he will turbo-charge them. At the end of last month the health minister, Vaughan Gething, said that within two to three weeks from then Wales would be carrying out 5,000 tests a day.
Q: How many coronavirus infections are acquired in hospital? At a press conference on Tuesday, Gething expressed frustration that not all its current testing capacity was being taken up and called for more frontline staff to be referred.
Powis says the UK has a good record of dealing with hospital-acquired infections. But the Gwynedd council leader, Dyfrig Siencyn, said:
But he says there will be some coronavirus infections acquired in hospitals. The speaker, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, has outlined plans for a virtual Commons to return on 21 April, including enabling MPs to partake remotely in PMQs, urgent questions and statements via live video link.
Hospitals are doing what they can to avoid this. He says the NHS is actively looking at this now. Once this is established to be working well, the model could be extended to debates on motions and legislation, and a system of remote voting in divisions of the House, he added.
Sunak says the government remains very committed to its levelling up agenda. The speaker has approved the “draft operating model” and it is now with the government and main opposition parties for review. A virtual meeting of the procedure committee will consider the model on 15 April.
That can be a critical part of getting back to normal, he says. If the House of Commons Commission gives its approval on 16 April, it would be for the Leader of the House, following consultation with the parties, to put forward motions setting out any temporary arrangements for the House to consider on 21 April.
He says the levelling up agenda, and investing in infrastructure, will only become more important. Disability campaigners who fear they could be denied life-saving treatment if they contract coronavirus are threatening the government with legal action.
Q: Can you confirm that no company has been told not to supply PPE to Scotland? Letters have been sent to the health secretary, Matt Hancock, and NHS England calling on them to publish guidance on how doctors assign priority to patients during the pandemic or else face a courtroom challenge.
Sunak says the national clinical director in Scotland dismissed this story as “rubbish”. He says there has been close collaboration between the four countries of the UK. Disability campaigners are worried, according to the law firm Rook Irwin Sweeney, that if they contract the virus they may be deemed less likely to benefit from life-saving treatment so instead would receive only palliative care.
Doyle says the four chief medical officers in the UK work closely. They want to make sure each country gets what it needs. She says Public Health England has not directed any of the countries to be at a disadvantage. The failure to produce guidance on how decisions will be made is discriminatory and amounts to a breach of their clients’ human rights, it is alleged. The letter said legal action will be launched next week if there is no satisfactory response.
(This answer is hard to square with the claim on the Gompels website. See 4.41pm.) Among the campaigners are Doug Paulley, 42, a stroke-sufferer who lives in in a care home in Wetherby, West Yorkshire. He has already won a landmark case at the supreme court on the rights of wheelchair users on buses. He said:
Q: Have people in care homes been forgotten? Anne-Marie Irwin, a partner at Rook Irwin Sweeney who acts for the campaigners, said:
Absolutely not, says Sunak. The Department of Health and Social Care has been asked for comment.
He says the government wants to speed up the publication of care home data. Sir Simon Stevens, the chief executive of NHS England, self-isolated for more than week after experiencing coronavirus symptoms, the BBC’s health editor Hugh Pym reports.
Doyle says she would like to have the best possible data on a daily basis. The care sector is seen as part of the care home family, she says. In Pym’s tweet, he says Stevens “has revealed he has had coronavirus”, indicating he might have been tested, though this remains unclear.
But it is a very dispersed sector, she says. Sunak wraps up the press conference by thanking the public for continuing to follow the social distancing guidelines, particularly over the sunny weekend.
Powis says there are fewer hospitals than care homes. And they are used to providing information to government quickly. Those are two reasons why hospital figures come out more quickly. I’ll post a summary of the press conference soon.
Sunak says there are 200 NHS trusts. But there are tens of thousands of social care sectors. Q: One thing that might make the economy even worse is a no-deal Brexit. So why is that still an option?
Q: Your slides include figures for France, which include care home data. So isn’t it unfair to compare those to the UK figures, which do not include care home data? Sunak says the UK has left the EU with a deal. The government is committed to getting a trade deal with the EU. He says Michel Barnier and David Frost have discussed how the talks can continue. He is confident that those talks can reach a conclusion.
Doyle says different countries report data in different ways. She says the UK is trying to learn from that. Q: If universal credit really an adequate safety net? Are you open to a universal basic income?
Q: Tonight there are warnings of 2m extra people losing their jobs. Will we feel the costs of this crisis for a generation? Sunak says he does not think that is the right response. He thinks UC is working well. The DWP is under pressure, but given the circumstances it is processing claims effectively.
Sunak says he is troubled by these numbers. This is not an abstract things. People are going to feel the results. He says the government has put extra money into the welfare system too.
But he says the measures the government has implemented will make a difference. Q: The Nightingale hospital in London is largely empty. Why cannot it be used for people from care homes?
He says he does not accept that people will be affected for a generation. It will be difficult in the short term, he says. But he says we will be able to “recover quickly and strongly”. Doyle says she does know why care home patients have not been admitted. But there is no reason why they should not be admitted, she says.
Q: Do you really think we can just shake this off in a few months? Powis says the NHS has made sure it has extra capacity so that, if clinicians want to sent patients to hospital, they can.
Sunak says he thinks it will be possible to have “a reasonably fast bounce back”. Q: How are you going to find the money to help address the deficit this will create?
But the OBR is right to say borrowing will increase, he says. Sunak says he cannot write tax policy now. It will cost a lot. But the best way out is just to grow the economy, he says. He says if that were to happen, the long-term impact on the public finances would be reduced.
He says that should allow the public finances to return to a reasonably stable position reasonably soon. Q: Can you name things you wish we had done differently? Or has the UK response been without fault?
Q: When will you include care home deaths in the daily figures? Doyle says her colleagues have been working since mid-January, sometimes seven days a week. They have learned so much. She says she wishes they knew what they now know then. It would have been wonderful to know when the virus was first around.
Doyle says the government is working with the ONS to speed up the reporting of care home deaths. She says they have so much to learn.
Powis is now presented the latest slides with data about the lockdown strategy. Yes, of course we could do things better. That’s why we keep talking to our neighbours.
Transport use is down, he says. She says she is humble about this.
He says the number of new cases is plateauing, although he accepts that, because not everyone is being tested, these figures do not show all new cases. Powis says as a doctor he is always looking back to see what you can learn. But he says it is too early to say what the main lessons are. He says the answers at this end of this will be different from what they would be today. But it will be important to learn lessons, he says.
But the number of hospital admissions is stabilising, he says. Sunak says they have been faced with an unprecedented challenge. Of course there will be things to learn, he says.
On the death figures, Powis says these are the numbers that will be the last to level off. Q: Will you consider the proposal from George Osborne [see 3.40pm] for the Treasury to offer 100% loan guarantees in some circumstances?
Sunak says taking action to save lives now is also the right thing to do for the economy. He says it is a common sense approach. Sunak says he will look at this. But he says it would not be him taking 100% of the risk. It would be the taxpayer. Banks would have no incentives to scrutinise loans, he says. But he says Germany and Switzerland have adopted this approach. He says he will consider it.
He says the health secretary, Matt Hancock, will make an announcement about social care tomorrow. Sunak says he will consider making some of the coronavirus business loans 100% guaranteed by the government, not just 80% guaranteed.
Sunak reads out the latest UK figures. The data is here. Q: Isn’t is just unfair to produce a graph comparing UK figures, without care home deaths, to French figures, with care home deaths? (See 5.10pm.) On a like by like basis, the UK would be ahead of France, wouldn’t it?
Sunak says the OBR has said that the policies followed by the government will allow the economy to bounce back. Without those policies, the situation would be much worse, he says. He says this means the OBR is saying the government plan is the right plan. Doyle accepts it would be better if the figures did compare like with like. The government is always ready to learn, she says.
Sunak starts by talking about the OBR report.
The OBR report is not a forecast or a prediction, Sunak says. He says it is just one scenario.
He says the economic impact of the lockdown will be significant.
But it will also be temporary, he says.
Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, is about to hold the government’s daily coronavirus press conference. He is appearing with Stephen Powis, the medical director of NHS England, and Yvonne Doyle, medical director of Public Health England.
London’s Nightingale hospital has remained largely empty, with just 19 patients being treated at the facility over the Easter weekend, the Health Service Journal understands.
The temporary Docklands facility was designed to hold 2,900 intensive care beds, plus 750 additional beds, but internal data seen by the HSJ suggested established hospitals have been able to double their ICU capacity on their existing estates and are so far coping with the surge in demand.
The low numbers at the Nightingale are also likely to be influenced by the tight criteria that was agreed for patients to be admitted there, which excluded the most frail patients.
Read the HSJ story here.
As the Daily Record reports, a firm called Gompels, which makes PPE (personal protective equipment), has got a notice on its website saying that it can only sell certain items, like surgical masks and aprons, to customers in England. It says:
This will fuel claims that, contrary to assurances from No 10, Scottish organisations trying to buy PPE are at a disadvantaged compared to their English counterparts.
This may well come up at the government press conference, which is due to start at 5pm.
A total of 207 prisoners have tested positive for coronavirus in 57 prisons in England and Wales as of 5pm on Monday, the Ministry of Justice said.
Some 62 prison staff have tested positive for Covid-19 in 28 prisons as well as five prisoner escort and custody services staff.
Just four prisoners have been released since the government announced plans 10 days ago to release up to 4,000 inmates to combat the spread of the coronavirus, MPs have heard, but a “few hundred” will be temporarily freed tomorrow.
Lucy Frazer, the justice minister, told a remote session of the justice committee 14 pregnant women or female inmates held in mother and baby units have now been released, out of a potential 70, while four men had been released early under broader plans announced on 4 April. Frazer said:
Pressed on what “a significant number” means, Frazer said:
Penal reform campaigners and charities working with offenders have called on the government to speed up releases from prison as well as to go further and release more than currently proposed. As well as releasing prisoners, the Ministry of Justice is building 500 temporary cells across the existing prison estate to increase single cell occupancy.
The government is expected to resume post-Brexit talks with the European Union next week, in a coronavirus-era experiment with negotiations by video link.
The EU’s chief negotiator Michel Barnier is due to speak to his opposite number David Frost on Wednesday, where they are expected to agree a timetable for talks in April and May, including several days next week.
The EU and UK only managed one round of talks before coronavirus crashed the negotiations, leading to two cancelled sessions and putting the lead players into isolation.
Barnier is now recovered, after coming down with coronavirus last month. Frost, who had “mild symptoms” of the virus, has now passed the recommended period for self isolation.
Last week, scores of EU and UK officials took part in multiple overlapping conference calls, where they quizzed each other on rival legal texts for a future draft agreement. The exchanges were said to be slowed by the voice-call only format.
Officials plan to run next week’s talks by video link. They hope to replicate the format of the first round of talks: parallel talks on eleven different negotiation themes from trade to transport, fisheries to security, with opening and closing sessions led by Frost and Barnier.
During recent phone calls, neither side discussed the fraught question of extending talks, with a 1 July deadline to agree a delay looming on the horizon.
If the UK wants to extend post-Brexit talks, it cannot bank on an eleventh-hour deal, as it will need to agree ongoing contributions to the EU budget to cover any time after 2020.
In the latest episode of our Science Weekly podcast, the Guardian’s science correspondent Nicola Davis speaks to Dr Andy Whittamore about the effects of Covid-19 on people with asthma and what they can do to protect themselves. You can listen to the episode here.
As the Press and Journal reports, Donald Macaskill, CEO of Scottish Care, which represents the care home sector in Scotland, claimed on BBC Radio Scotland that suppliers of PPE (personal protective equipment) were prioritising customers in England. Last week a care home owner in Wales made the same allegation.
Downing Street has rejected the claim that England is taking precedence. (See 2.27pm.) As our colleague Libby Brooks reported earlier (see 1.07pm), the Scottish government is more reluctant to dismiss it outright.