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UK coronavirus live: Boris Johnson faces Keir Starmer at PMQs after new restrictions unveiled
UK coronavirus live: Boris Johnson faces Keir Starmer at PMQs after new restrictions unveiled
(32 minutes later)
English rules don’t go ‘anywhere near far enough’, says leading government Covid adviser
Labour leader presses prime minister on testing capacity at weekly Commons clash
PMQs is starting.
Siobhain McDonagh (Lab) asks if the government will support her bill to give children on free school meal access to the internet at home.
Yesterday Ipsos MORI published its latest political monitor. Here is what the polling says about Boris Johnson and Sir Keir Starmer.
Johnson says this is an important point. He says he agrees with McDonagh about the digital divide. He says he wants every school in the country to have access to gigabyte broadband.
Here are the satisfaction ratings. (This is not the same as ‘who would be the best PM’.)
Johnson say he hopes that the work on the A38 upgrade in Cornwall will work as soon as possible.
And this chart shows how the two leaders are rated on particular qualities. Starmer is ahead or tied with Johnson on all attributes apart from patriotism and having lots of personality.
Florence Eshalomi (Lab) asks what the government is doing to help tenants who have unsafe cladding on their buildings.
Ken Clarke, the Conservative former chancellor who has just joined the House of Lords as a peer, told Adam Boulton on Sky’s All Out Politics a few minutes ago that he would be “astonished” if the internal market bill - the legislation enabling the government to break its Brexit withdrawal treaty obligations - passes the upper house. He said:
Johnson says the situation is “disgraceful”. This cladding should come off as soon as possible, he says.
Last night YouGov published some snap polling suggesting strong support for the new restrictions announced by Boris Johnson yesterday - although 45% of people said they did not go far enough.
Johnson says the government’s housing targets will focus on brownfield land.
The Academy of Medical Sciences, which produced a 79-page report commissioned by the UK government’s chief scientific advisor, Sir Patrick Vallance, on what needed to be done to prepare for a second wave of Covid-19 over the winter, has reacted to the latest measures by the prime minister to prevent spread of the virus.
Johnson says of course the government is going to come forward with further measures to support businesses. But he says he does not think it would be sensible to just extend the furlough scheme.
The academy’s president, Prof Robert Lechler, said public messaging was key. He explained:
Johnson says he really wishes the government was not having to impose the restrictions it is.
The SNP is also saying the government should extend the furlough scheme. This is from the SNP MP Drew Hendry, its business spokesman.
Patrick Grady (SNP) asks what Johnson’s vision is for building back better.
More than half of working adults were travelling into work by the end of August, ONS data shows.
Johnson says space ports will help Scotland, but he quotes the Barnett figure for overall funding going to Scotland.
This proportion had increased from just 36% in late May. However, the number of commuters is likely to fall again, as Boris Johnson encouraged workers to stay at home where possible in a public statement yesterday.
Neil Parish (Con) asks the PM to support plans for a new school in Tiverton.
The survey also found that the number of people socialising in public and private spaces had increased significantly. Around 2% of respondents said they were socialising in public or in private in mid-May, increasing to almost 30% by the end of August.
Johnson says the education secretary will have heard the request.
The ONS has produced an interactive based on its ongoing coronavirus lifestyle survey which can be viewed here.
Grahame Morris (Lab) says even the Bank of England is calling for a targeted expansion of the furlough scheme. Will the PM listen?
Labour is calling for an urgent statement from the government today on what will be done to replace the furlough scheme when it ends in October. This is from Ed Miliband, the shadow business secretary. He said:
Johnson says Morris is right about the gravity of the situation. He says the job retention bonus is in place. He says the government is looking at a “massive package” of measures to help people over the short, medium and long term.
Here’s a very useful Guardian graphic explaining what the new restrictions are for the four nations of the UK.
Johnson says he wants to find a replacement for the Dublin convention, the EU rule on the return of refugees.
In Wales, in addition to the formal restrictions that go beyond what applies in England, people are being urged to avoid unnecessary travel. Speaking on BBC Breakfast this morning, Mark Drakeford, the Welsh first minister, explained why. He said:
The Green MP Caroline Lucas asks the PM to support a biodiversity target for 30% of land and sea to be set aside for nature.
The Commons is due to debate the second reading of the overseas operations nill today, which will introduce a controversial presumption against prosecution for torture, war crimes and all almost other all offences for British soldiers serving abroad after five years.
Johnson say it was the UK government that pioneered this idea and came up with this target. It will support it, he says.
Critics say in it effect legalises torture because it would allow the MoD to obfuscate when allegations surface until the five year limit passes, but the bill is popular in Conservative circles because it prevents what the party says are “vexatious claims” against British forces abroad.
Johnson says it is “totally baffling” that the SNP is not supporting the internal market bill. And they would hand Scotland’s fisheries straight back to Brussels.
Although some Tory grandees such as Malcolm Rifkind have raised concerns, no Tory rebellion is expected when the vote is taken towards the end of the day. But the Labour position looks a little more interesting ...
Ian Blackford, the SNP leader at Westminter, says 1m jobs are at risk when furlough ends. He say the PM is leading us into another winter of discontent. Nicola Sturgeon has shown leadership, he says. He calls for an immediate announcement about the extension of the furlough scheme.
The BBC’s Nick Robinson says Dominic Raab, the foreign secretary, was wrong when he said earlier that the table service rule would apply to fast-food chains like McDonalds. (See 10.15am.)
Johnson says the SNP and Labour are now calling for an indefinite extension of the furlough scheme.
Catherine McGuinness, policy chair for the City of London Corporation, the local authority for the financial sector in the capital, said the corporation was “disappointed” by the new advice saying people should work from home if they can. She told the Today programme:
He says the government will continue to adopt a creative approach.
She claimed other financial centres had people back in the office without apparent related increases in infection and called on the government to look “really closely” at coronavirus evidence.
Blackford says nobody is asking for an indefinite extension of the furlough scheme.
Campaigners working to persuade the government to reinstate care home visits have attacked the government after it said it was too busy to respond to their legal challenge.
Even the Bank of England governor is saying it needs to be extended, he says.
Julia Jones and Nicci Gerrard, the co-founders of John’s Campaign, sent a pre-action protocol letter to the health secretary, Matt Hancock, earlier this month, arguing the Department of Health and Social Care’s guidelines violates fundamental human rights and disability law.
He says 61,000 jobs in Scotland are at risk. Those workers do not want a hug from Johnson.
The DHSC was required to reply by 23rd September but yesterday sent a letter to the campaign’s lawyers, Leigh Day, saying it was not feasible for them to comply because “they are extremely busy dealing with the pandemic.”
Johnson says the government will continue to support workers.
Jones said:
He says he knows Blackford does not want a hug from him. But he says “throwing an arm around workers” is a metaphor.
Age UK and the National Care Forum estimate there are hundreds of thousands of people affected. Some residents, say Jones, believe they have been abandoned by their family and give up the struggle to live. A few have attempted to take their own lives. She said:
Starmer says he is asking about new support for business.
Dominic Raab, the foreign secretary, was on duty for this government this morning in the broadcasting studios. Here are the main points he was making.
This is not theoretical. At Whitebread 6,000 job lossess were announced yesterday. He quotes leading business figures saying the government needs to act.
Raab hinted that the furlough scheme could be extended in some form for some sectors beyond October. Speaking on Sky News, he said:
Johnson say the government will get through this.
In a separate interview on LBC, after Raab spoke about the need for targeted support, he was asking he he was saying there would be “targeted furlough assistance” after October. “I didn’t say that,” Raab replied. He went on:
He quotes the shadow education secretary as saying “don’t let a good crisis go to waste”. That shows Labour wants to exploit the crisis. Labour should support what the government is doing, he says.
When it was put to him that that sounded like targeted furlough assistance, he replied:
Starmer says Johnson does not understand the problems caused by children being ill but not having Covid.
Raab refused to deny a report saying the government’s chief medical adviser think the restrictions announced for England do not go far enough. Asked if the government’s scientific advice was saying that the measures announced yesterday were enough, Raab did not say yes. Instead he replied:
Why has the government not announced support for business?
In the Times (paywall) today Chris Smyth and Steven Swinford say Prof Chris Whitty, the chief medical adviser, thinks England will need a ban on visiting other people at home, like the one introduced in Scotland. Their story goes on:
Johnson says his plans will keep the economy moving.
Raab played down the suggestion that Boris Johnson thinks Britons find it hard obeying Covid rules because they are freedom loving. Johnson implied this twice yesterday. First in his Commons statement he suggested that the British love for freedom was somehow related to the fact that other countries had lower rates of infection and better test and trace systems. Then, in his TV broadcast, Johnson said:
He wants to suppress the virus, he says.
Asked what Johnson meant, Raab said:
Starmer says he is not complaining about the NHS. It is the government. His wife works for the NHS, his mother worked for the NHS, his sister works for it. So he won’t take criticism on that front.
When the Today presenter Justin Webb asked if Johnson was saying that people who obeyed the rules were less freedom-loving than those who did not, Raab replied:
He says pupils are having to miss school because of the lack of testing.
Raab said further restrictions were not being ruled out. He told Sky News:
Johnson says there is an exceptionally small risk to children. And the government is doing its level best to get tests to children. He says 99.9% of schools are back.
He said the government was facing “Goldilocks criticism - too much or too little” from people who thought the PM had gone too far, and from those who thought he had not gone far enough. But the government was taking a “balanced, targeted and proportionate approach”, Raab said.
Starmer says Johnson said the opposite yesterday. Everyone can read it in Hansard. He says a week ago the PM acknowledged that there was a problem. Is the PM saying capacity is the problem, as Dido Harding says? Or he is saying that too many healthy people are requesting tests, as Matt Hancock says?
He said the army might be able to help the police by being “there to backfill” - ie, doing non frontline tasks. But they would not be “patrolling the streets”, he said.
Johnson says the attacks on Harding from Labour are unseeming. He says the government is going to get testing up to 500,000 per day. He says he wants to hear “more of the spirit of togetherness” that was on display yesterday.
He said the table service rule would apply to fast-food chains like MacDonalds. Asked if customers would be able to queue for food and then sit down, he replied: “My understanding is that you need to be able to order from the tables.”
So why did Johnson say yesterday it had “very little” to do with the spread of the disease, Starmer asks.
Here is more from Prof John Edmunds’ interview on Today. (See 9.07am.) Explaining why he thought the measures announced by Boris Johnson did not go far enough, he said the March lockdown had been a “combination of many, many, many different measures”. He went on:
Johnson says it is an “epidemiological fact” that transmission takes place human to human. And capacity today is at a record high, he says.
Asked if there was a realistic chance the R number could be brought under 1 by Christmas, he said: “I suspect not. There’s a chance, of course there’s a chance.”
Sir Keir Starmer says three months ago Johnson said test and trace would be a real positive. Yesterday he said it had little impact on the spread of the disease. Which is right?
Speaking on Good Morning Britain this morning, Nicola Sturgeon said that the new household meeting ban for Scotland was “really tough” and not a decision she had taken lightly, but that she believed the action is necessary adding: “I’m looking at data that alarms me”.
Johnson says it is fact that test and trace does not have an impact on biological spread. But it can tell you where the disease is.
Asked how often she spoke to the prime minister, she replied “not as often as we should” and added that “all the devolved nations have been pressing for more regular four nations discussions”.
One of the presenters, Piers Morgan, asked her about the fact that no government minister had appeared on GMB for 148 days, to which she responded:
Good morning. It’s the day after Boris Johnson tightened coronavirus restrictions for England - with Scotland, Wales and Northern generally going further - and an intense debate is underway over whether the PM over-reacted, or under-reacted. Businesses are alarmed about the implications. But some scientists think Johnson ducked the need for tougher measures and one of them, Prof John Edmunds, was on the Today programme making this point within the last hour. Edmunds is head of the faculty of epidemiology and population health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and his team, along with Imperial College, developed modelling that helped to persuade the government to impose a lockdown in March. He also sits on the government’s Scientific Advisory Committee for Emergencies, and so he is one of the leading experts in this field.
Edmunds told the Today programme that it was “welcome that we’ve done something” and that working from home was a good idea. But he said that asking pubs, bars and restaurants to close at 10pm was “fairly trivial” and something that would “have a very small impact on the epidemic”. He went on:
Edmunds said he feared that, for the second time, the government would end up clamping down too late. He explained:
This is just one view, and scientists aren’t always right. But the Times (paywall) is reporting this morning that Prof Chris Whitty, the UK government’s chief medical adviser and the chief medical officer for England, thinks it is inevitable that England will have to ban people meeting in other people’s homes, as Scotland and Northern Ireland have done.
Here is the agenda for the day.
9.30am: The ONS is due to publish a report covering the lockdown.
12pm: Boris Johnson faces Sir Keir Starmer at PMQs.
12.15pm: The Scottish government is expected to hold its coronavirus briefing.
12.30pm: Mark Drakeford, the Welsh first minister, holds a press conference.
12.30pm: A minister responds to an urgent question in the Commons about evictions.
Around 1.30pm: Michael Gove, the Cabinet Office minister, makes a Commons statement about border arrangements at the end of the Brexit transition.
1.30pm: Downing Street is due to hold its lobby briefing.
Politics Live has been doubling up as the UK coronavirus live blog for some time and, given the way the Covid crisis eclipses everything, this will continue for the foreseeable future. But we will be covering non-Covid political stories too, and where they seem more important and interesting, they will take precedence.
Here is our global coronavirus live blog.
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