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UK coronavirus live: Boris Johnson admits country does not have enough testing capacity | |
(32 minutes later) | |
PM tells Commons liaison committee capacity will be up to 500,000 tests per day by end of October; Rhondda Valley outbreak linked to Doncaster races | |
In response to another question from Stride, Johnson says he is right to say the threat of interest rates rising in the future is a real one. | |
Mel Stride, the Tory chair of the Treasury committee, goes next. | |
Q: Will the Treasury consider what it can to do support businesses that will be viable when this is over? | |
Johnson says the government will be intensely creative to help. People would not have expected it to produce something as imaginative as the furlough scheme. It will continue like that, he says. | |
Q: If you land at an Italian airport, you can be tested and get a result in 30 minutes. But our constituents cannot get tested. What are you going to do about it? | |
Johnson says he knows people have had infuriating experiences. He sympathises with them. But 89% of people get a result within 24 hours. | |
As for airport tests, they can produce false results giving people a false sense of security. | |
Q: Your ‘it all seems to be going well’ response is not appropriate. | |
Johnson says that is not what he said. | |
Q: If the government can break the law in a limited and specific way, why shouldn’t people do the same with the rule of six? | |
Johnson says he is urging people to obey this rule. | |
Catherine McKinnell (Lab) goes next. | |
Q: Why did you reject the recommendations from a committee proposing measures to support pregnant women during the crisis? | |
Johnson says he does not think that is the case. He supports partners being allowed to be present when women are giving birth. He said so in the Commons at PMQs, he says. | |
Q: But the petitions committee made a series of recommendations on this. Currently it is easier for a male partner to go to the pub than to be present at the birth. The government rejected almost all of them. | |
Johnson says he is not aware of this, but will look into it. | |
Q: Why do you think the civil service needs reform? | |
Johnson says he thinks the civil service is fantastic. But he thinks it could do some things faster. | |
He says he wants to stress that any reform will not be motivated by disapproval. | |
He is still committed to the Northcote-Trevelyan principles. | |
Q: So when will ministers take responsibility for things going wrong, not officials? | |
Johnson says as PM he takes responsibility for what the government does. | |
William Wragg (Con) goes next. | |
Q: When will you hold the inquiry you have promised? | |
Johnson says he does not think it would be sensible to start working on it now. | |
Q: You must have done some work already on lessons learnt. Can you give examples? | |
Johnson says they have learnt much more about asymptomatic transmission. | |
Jenkin says if schools can’t stay open, there will be huge problems. He says at a school in his constituency 97% of pupils went back. Now only 88% of them are in school. | |
Johnson says the government is trying to speed up the testing process. | |
Q: Why are so many people demanding tests now? | |
Johnson says people want tests so they can go about their normal lives. | |
But the guidance is that people should only seek tests when they have symptoms. | |
He says the government will shortly set out the criteria that will decide who gets priority for testing. | |
Greg Clark, the Tory chair of the science committee, goes first. | |
Q: Do we have enough testing capacity? | |
Johnson says the short answer is no. | |
But he says by the end of October capacity will be up to 500,000 tests per day. | |
Sir Bernard Jenkin, the committee chair, starts by asking Boris Johnson to commit to appearing three times before the committee in 2020 - which would mean one more appearance before Christmas. | |
Johnson says he will “look carefully at his diary” and do his utmost to comply. | |
Jenkin says he will take that as a yes. | |
(Based on previous experience, that may not be wise.) | |
Boris Johnson will start giving evidence to the Commons liaison committee in the next few minutes. It’s a committee made up of the chairs of Commons select committees, and it normally questions the PM about three times a year. | |
Greater Manchester will start using hundreds of police community support officers and fire safety staff to plug the holes of the struggling NHS Test and Trace system.Andy Burnham, the Greater Manchester mayor, said the new locally-run contact-tracing unit would aim to quickly reach the 3,600 people falling through the gaps of the national system each week.The new unit will be staffed by more than 100 police and community support officers and 100 fire safety officers and aim to be established “in days rather than weeks”, Burnham said.Figures released by Burnham’s office today showed the government’s flagship NHS Test and Trace programme was still failing to reach 46% of the close contacts of people who had tested positive for coronavirus in Greater Manchester, equating to 519 people a day and 3,633 people a week.Burnham said instead of waiting for improvements to the privatised arm of Test and Trace, which is run by Serco and Sitel and is where most of the contacts are missed, Greater Manchester was taking matters into its own hands.“We are absolutely working flat-out to get this up and running as quickly as possible,” he said.The new command unit will mean staff are taken away from the already stretched Greater Manchester police and the region’s fire and rescue service. Burnham said the move “isn’t necessarily sustainable over the long term” but that it was being done in collaboration with the emergency services.The contact-tracing unit will also link into a new support service being launched to help people in Greater Manchester who will struggle to self-isolate for financial reasons. | |
Scotland has recorded 267 new coronavirus cases, amounting to 3.6% of people testing positive. And it has recorded one new death. | Scotland has recorded 267 new coronavirus cases, amounting to 3.6% of people testing positive. And it has recorded one new death. |
There have been no further deaths in Wales, but Public Health Wales has recorded 199 new cases. | There have been no further deaths in Wales, but Public Health Wales has recorded 199 new cases. |
And in Northern Ireland 129 new cases have been recorded, and two new deaths. | And in Northern Ireland 129 new cases have been recorded, and two new deaths. |
A new UK body to advocate for freedom of religion and belief has been launched with the backing of more than 50 organisations. | A new UK body to advocate for freedom of religion and belief has been launched with the backing of more than 50 organisations. |
The first action of the UK Freedom of Religion or Belief Forum was to urge the prime minister to act swiftly in appointing a new special envoy on religious freedom following the resignation on Monday of Rehman Chishti in protest at the government’s moves towards breaking international law through the internal market bill. | The first action of the UK Freedom of Religion or Belief Forum was to urge the prime minister to act swiftly in appointing a new special envoy on religious freedom following the resignation on Monday of Rehman Chishti in protest at the government’s moves towards breaking international law through the internal market bill. |
The forum is chaired by Philip Mounstephen, the bishop of Truro, who last year led an independent review commissioned by the Foreign Office on how the government should respond to Christian persecution around the world. | |