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UK coronavirus live: Boris Johnson to announce plans to reopen pubs, restaurants, cinemas and museums
UK coronavirus live: Boris Johnson ditches 2-metre rule for '1-metre-plus' in England
(32 minutes later)
Reopenings expected to be accompanied by changes to social distancing rules
Members of two households in England will be able to meet from 4 July; English pubs, restaurants and hairdressers to open from same date. Gyms to stay closed. English schools to fully reopen in September
Boris Johnson is due to start his Commons statement within the next few minutes.
Johnson is responding to Starmer.
Here is our overnight preview story.
He says the scientists think this will not cause a second wave.
Local outbreaks of Covid-19 could grow undetected because the government is failing to share crucial testing data, council leaders and scientists have warned.
On local government, he says his government will support them and give them what they need.
More than a month after being promised full details of who has caught the disease in their areas, local health chiefs are still desperately lobbying the government’s testing tsar, Baroness Harding, to break the deadlock and share the data.
He says he does not think any other country in the world has done as much to support business.
The situation was described by one director of public health as a “shambles”, while a scientist on the government’s own advisory committee said it was “astonishing” that public health teams are unable to access the information.
On track and trace (as Johnson calls it - it is now officially called test and trace), he claims that no country has a properly-functioning app.
The prime minister said on Friday the country was moving from “a huge one-size-fits-all national lockdown programme to one in which we’re able to do more localised responses”, and ministers have told councils and their public health directors to take the lead.
(That is not a claim that countries using test and trace apps would accept.)
You can read the full story here –
And Johnson suggests that Starmer has now performed a U-turn, because Starmer is now saying it is safe for children to return to school.
Sir David King, the former government chief scientific adviser, has told the BBC that he thinks it is “far too early” for the government to be relaxing the two-metre rule, as it is proposing to do for England.
Starmer can be seen shaking his head. (He has never accepted the Johnson characterisation that he was against children returning to school.)
King chairs Independent Sage, the group of independent scientists set up as an alternative to Sage, the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, and he was reiterating the argument made be Independent Sage in a report at the weekend saying that the two-metre rule should stay. At the time King said:
Starmer asks for assurances that Johnson has the support of Sage.
Until now the government’s official scientific advisers on Sage have backed the exiting two-metre rule, although that may change today. Prof Chris Whitty, the government’s chief medical adviser, and Sir Patrick Vallance, the government’s chief scientific adviser, who co-chair Sage, are appearing at the PM’s press conference later, and they are likely to give some approval to the government’s decision to abandon the two-metre rule - although journalists will be listening carefully for any evidence that they might be more hesitant about this move than Boris Johnson.
He asks for assurances about test and trace.
This paper (pdf) from late April, from the Sage environmental and modelling group, is a good example of what Sage used to say about the two-metre rule. It says:
Labour wants more detail and more clarity. But it welcomes this, he says.
These are from the Financial Times’ Chris Giles, who has been using published data to produce an estimate for the overall UK excess deaths figure.
Sir Keir Starmer is responding to Johnson.
The coronavirus crisis has highlighted the huge benefits immigration has brought to the UK, a report has argued.
He says, when he became Labour leader, he said he would support the government if it was doing the right thing.
In a new publication, the race equality thinktank the Runnymede Trust says the country’s reliance on low-paid, often migrant workers in frontline services during the Covid-19 pandemic has exposed the immigration system as “dysfunctional, cruel and in need of reform”.
He says, although Labour will look at the details, overall it supports what Johnson has announced. He says he thinks the government is trying to do the right thing.
The report, From Expendable to Key Workers and Back Again: Immigration and the Lottery of Belonging in Britain, criticises the immigration bill going through parliament.
Here is my colleague Heather Stewart’s story on the announcement from Johnson.
The legislation will bring to fruition the promise of an “Australian-style points-based system”, pledged by Boris Johnson as part of the Vote Leave campaign during the EU referendum, and will make it harder for “low-skilled” workers to come to the UK.
Johnson says there are bound to be flare-ups, as we have seen in other countries.
The trust said the bill would close the doors on people such as those “who have been working for the NHS, in care homes, for public transport services and in supermarkets, playing a vital role on the frontline of keeping the country moving in an unprecedented national crisis”.
The government will crack down on them locally, and will not hesitate to reintroduced national measures if necessary, he says.
A recent ICM poll for British Future found that the Covid-19 pandemic had shifted public opinion to be more supportive of those labelled “low-skilled” workers. Two-thirds of the public (64%) agreed that “the coronavirus crisis has made me value the role of ‘low skilled’ workers in essential services such as care homes, transport and shops, more than before”.
A new optimism is palpable, he says.
The trust is calling on the government to scrap the no recourse to public funds policy, which denies some arrivals to the UK access to the welfare safety net, and lift the ban on working while asylum claims are processed. It said there should be a maximum 28-day time limit for immigration detention and an automatic judicial oversight of decisions to detain.
But it would be too easy for coronavirus to return. That is why the government is trusting the people to be careful.
And on the subject of care homes (see 10.42am), for the first time on Thursday MPs will hold a debate triggered by e-petitions in the main House of Commons chamber, instead of in the Westminster Hall annex, where debates on petitions are normally held. The debate has been prompted by four petitions, including one saying NHS staff should be paid more (signed by 162,000 people) and one saying social care should get parity of esteem with the NHS (signed by 43,000 people).
Johnson says schools in England will reopen in September for primary and secondary school pupils in full.
Debates on petitions have no direct effect - MPs don’t vote to approve specific policies - but they do raise the profile of some causes.
He says, after the toughest restrictions in peacetime history, the government is now making it easier for people to see friends and family, and to go to work.
Catherine McKinnell, the MP who chairs the Commons petitions committee, said:
Johnson says pubs and hairdressers will be allowed to open up in England from 4 July.
And these are from Nick Stripe, head of the health analysis and life events division at the ONS, on today’s figures.
Some other services, like nail bars, will be allowed to open if they can do so in a safe way, he says.
This is from my colleague Pamela Duncan on the ONS figures today.
He says people from one household will be able to stay overnight at another.
The Commons health and social care committee has been taking evidence this morning from staff in the care home industry. Sue Ann Balcombe, registered manager at the Priscilla Wakefield House Nursing Home in north London, told MPs on the committee that care staff were seen as “underdogs and the Cinderellas”. She explained:
And he says campsites will be allowed to open, provided washing facilities and toilets can be kept clean.
She also said that her home, which is mostly funded by the local authority or clinical commissioning groups, could only pay staff at the minimum wage because of the amount of funding they received. But that did not reflect the value of the work done by staff, she said.
But indoors facilities, like gyms, bowling alleys and waterparks, will have to stay closed, he says.
The Treasury has revealed loans to businesses hit by the coronavirus lockdown have totalled more than £40bn up to June 21, including £28.1bn in bounce-back loans, £10.5bn through the coronavirus business interruption loan scheme (CBILS), £2.1bn in coronavirus large business interruption loan scheme (CLBILS) to larger firms and £236.2m as part of its future fund. The full details are in a Treasury release here.
But the government will work with the sector to look at how they can open up.
The government, which is guaranteeing the vast majority of the loans, should they not be repaid, added that 9.2m jobs were covered by the furlough scheme, operated by HM Revenue and Customs, with 1.1m businesses claiming a total of £22.9bn up to June 21.
It will work with orchestras and choirs to look at how they can start performing again.
And he says places of worship will be allowed to reopen for prayer and services and even weddings for a maximum of 30 people, subject to social distancing.
Johnson says the government cannot lift all restrictions at once.
He says it is making balanced judgement.
But it is also trusting people.
From now on, people will be asked to follow guidance, instead of law.
From 4 July two households will be able to meet up inside in England, Johnson says.
But he says the government is recommending that multiple households don’t meet up indoors.
Johnson says the virus’s only interest is in recapturing ground vacated by people.
So the only certainty is, the fewer contacts, the better, he says.
Johnson says the expert say that the risk from “one metre plus” is broadly similar to the risk from two metres once the mitigating factors are taken into account.
Johnson says he can now ease the lockdown further in England.
At every stage caution will be his watchword, he says.
Johnson says two-metre social distancing rule to go from 4 July.
He says he ordered a review of this. He will publish it this week.
The government is now recommending a “one metre plus” rule.
That means staying at least one metre apart, and taking other mitigating measures too.
Guidance will be issued to firms as to what these measures should be.
Johnson says the Covid-19 alert level has been downgraded from four to three.
The administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland will respond to this in their own way, he says.
But all parts of the UK are moving in the same direction.
Johnson says the pandemic has inflicted lasting damage.
But yesterday the rolling average of daily deaths stood at 130.
He says the government does not believe there is currently a risk of a second peak that would overwhelm the NHS.
Johnson says from the outset the government has trusted “in the common sense and perseverance of the British people”. That trust has been rewarded, he says.
The number of new infections is falling by between 2% and 4% every day.
A month ago, one in 400 people had coronavirus. Now it is one in 1,700.
He says the public threw a human shield around the NHS, and the NHS has protected us.
Boris Johnson is making his Commons statement now.
He starts with condolences to the family and friends of the three men killed in the Reading park attack.
Sir Lindsay Hoyle, the Commons Speaker, has now given what is effectively a three-minute warning ahead of the PM’s statement.
(He has to suspend business for a short period to allow MPs to leave the chamber in a socially distanced way and new MPs to come in.)
