Afternoon summary
- Boris Johnson rejects the idea of a blanket ban on lucrative second jobs for MPs but believes they must be “visible” to their constituents, No 10 has said. This amounts to implicit criticism of Sir Geoffrey Cox, the Conservative MP and former attorney general who it emerged was voting remotely during lockdown while in the Caribbean doing legal work for the the British Virgin Islands, a tax haven. Labour demanded an inquiry, saying his work was inappropriate because he was helping the BVI respond to a corruption investigation initiated by the UK government. (See 1.13pm.)
Updated
UK records 262 new Covid deaths
The UK has recorded 262 new Covid deaths, the government has revealed in its daily coronavirus dashboard update. This is the third highest daily figure for reported deaths since the second wave peak at the start of the year, only passed by the figures for 26 October (263) and 2 November (293).
But the dashboard also shows that cases are on a downward trend, with 33,117 new cases recorded, and the weekly total for new cases down 14.8% on the previous week. Deaths tend to lag behind cases by three or more weeks, and the dashboard figures suggest that, after a recent increase, deaths may be starting to plateau. Week on week, they are now only up by 2.6%.
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Boris Johnson returning to Cop26 summit tomorrow, No 10 says
Boris Johnson will travel to the Cop26 climate change summit in Glasgow tomorrow, Downing Street has announced. A No 10 spokesperson said:
The prime minister is going up to meet negotiators, to get an update on progress in the talks and encourage ambitious action in the final days of the negotiations.
Photograph: Paul Ellis/AFP/Getty Images
The Economist’s Matthew Holehouse thinks it is a mistake for Labour to be attacking Sir Geoffrey Cox on the basis of the clients he is working for, as Anneliese Dodds has done in her letter to the PM today. (See 1.13pm.)
Genuinely surprised to see the Labour Party pursue this corrosive line of argument - that a barrister should be judged by the clients they keep, not least when the client is a UK overseas territory. Nor does it work as an attack line given Sir KS cannot believe it to be true. pic.twitter.com/fR4d9znQDz
— Matthew Holehouse (@mattholehouse) November 9, 2021
There is also plainly a difference between second jobs that MPs do that parasitise their position (Paterson) and those that are simply distractions (Cox). Both might be a problem but they are different problems.
— Matthew Holehouse (@mattholehouse) November 9, 2021
Tom Newton Dunn from Times Radio thinks government whips are starting to brief against the PM.
This is quite something. Two different backbench Tory MPs tell me they have been approached by whips in the last 24 hours to tell them the Chief, Mark Spencer, was NOT the instigator of last week's disastrous motion, but he was following direct orders from the PM. It means...
— Tom Newton Dunn (@tnewtondunn) November 9, 2021
...government whips have (officially or not) begun actively briefing against No10. Sources close to Spencer emphatically deny he sanctioned this. Govt source: “It was a Government decison. It’s a team game, we stand or fall together”. More on @TimesRadio at 4pm.
— Tom Newton Dunn (@tnewtondunn) November 9, 2021
Chris Bryant, the chair of the Commons standards committee, has released the text of a letter he has received from Jacob Rees-Mogg, the leader of the Commons, with the wording of the motions that MPs will vote on next week approving the committee’s report into Owen Paterson. No 10 announced the vote was coming at lobby. (See 12.27pm.)
Here you go. I am grateful that the government is tabling precisely the motion I asked for yesterday for debate next Monday. pic.twitter.com/01oVpMNfLd
— Chris Bryant (@RhonddaBryant) November 9, 2021
Angela Rayner, who as Labour’s deputy leader shadows Dominic Raab in his capacity as deputy PM, has written an open letter to Raab complaining about his claim this morning that Geoffrey Cox’s work in the British Virgin Islands was “quite important” because it was useful for parliament to have some knowledge of what is happening in the overseas territories. (See 9.40am.) She said:
The Conservative member of parliament in question was not engaging in a fact-finding mission to gain more knowledge about the British Virgin Islands so we can take action against corruption, money laundering and tax avoidance in tax havens. He was advising the government of the British Virgin Islands, a tax haven accused of corruption, on their response to an investigation by our own government looking into evidence of corruption, abuse of office and serious dishonesty. In other words, he was advising the government of the British Virgin Islands against our own government on how to defend against allegations of corruption.
Your comments typify the arrogant and out-of-touch approach of this corrupt Conservative government – showing no contrition at all for voting to support corruption and rip up the independent standards system, and now insulting the British people by suggesting that this Conservative member of parliament was actually acting in the best interests of voters here in Britain.
Updated
In his point of order Chris Bryant also referred to the No 10 announcement that there would be a second vote next week on the standards committee report saying Owen Paterson broke the rules on lobbying. (See 12.27pm.) He asked the deputy speaker Nigel Evans if he had any more information about when that vote might take place. Mark Harper, the Tory former chief whip, said it was wrong for the announcement about next week’s vote to have been announced to the lobby, not to MPs in the chamber.
Evans said he agreed it was “not really appropriate” for the announcement about this vote to have been made outside parliament. He also said it was “a shame” that the new vote was not announced earlier.
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Senior judicial figure to advise standards committee on how its procedures could be improved, Bryant tells MPs
In the Commons Chris Bryant, the chair of the Commons standards committee, has just announced that his committee has appointed a senior judicial figure to advise it on whether its procedures could be improved.
This is a concession to those MPs, particularly Owen Paterson’s allies, who argued that Paterson did not get a fair hearing from the committee because its procedures were flawed. Their main complaints were that Paterson did not get a right of appeal, and that some of his witnesses were not heard by the committee.
Bryant has argued that these complaints were unfounded, because Paterson did effectively get a right of appeal and because the views of his witnesses were fully taken into account. But he has accepted that some aspects of how the system works could be reformed. His committee is currently concluding an inquiry covering this very topic.
Raising a point of order, Bryant told MPs:
We have decided today that we will be commissioning a senior judicial figure to advise us on possible changes to the process. We’ve already taken advice today from Sir Stephen Irwin [the retired judge who chairs the Independent Expert Panel, the body dealing with cases involving bullying and sexual harassment complaints against MPs]. We believe that our present practices guarantee a fair hearing, but we will always consider suggestions for improvements.
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Here is my colleague Denis Campbell’s story about Javid’s announcement.
Tim Loughton (Con) asks Javid what his assessment is of the proportion of the 103,000 unvacinated staff who are exempt.
Javid says the impact statement will give more details. With care home staff, the announcement of a mandatory vaccination policy led to the number of staff getting vaccinated increased “dramatically”, he says.
Mark Harper (Con) asks if the government will publish a plan explaining what will be done to deal with the vacancies created by this policy before MPs vote on it.
Javid says an impact statement will be published today. And the government will publish more details of its workforce planning later.
Clive Efford (Lab) asks if Javid will follow a suggestion from the royal colleges and the unions that FFP face masks should be compulsory for health workers.
Javid says this is being kept under review.
Jeremy Hunt, the Conservative former health secretary, welcomed the policy. And Matt Hancock, Javid’s immediate predecessor, has just told MPs that he was in favour too. He said he backed making flu vaccines compulsory too, and he said he was glad Javid has not ruled that out.
In response, Javid paid tribute to Hancock for laying the foundations for the successful vaccination programme.
Javid says 103,000 NHS workers still have not had first jab
Javid thanks Ashworth for his approach. He says the cross-party support for vaccines has been helpful.
He says the vaccine take-up in the NHS in England is 93% for the first dose, and 90% for both doses. He says 103,000 people have not had a single jab.
He says it is hard to know how many of them will now choose to get vaccinated. With care homes, once vaccination became mandatory for staff, a “significant number” of workers came forward to get vaccinated, he says. He says he would expect that to happen in the NHS too.
Staff will be offered one-to-one meetings with clinicians if they want their concerns addressed, he says.
Updated
Jonathan Ashworth, the shadow health secretary, says he would urge Javid to proceed “with caution”.
There are more than 90,000 vacancies across the NHS, he says.
There will be anxiety at trust level that the policy, however desirable in principle, will exacerbate these problems, he says. He says they cannot afford to lose thousands of staff.
He welcomes Javid’s decision to delay introducing this until next spring.
But he has some questions.
What is the number of NHS staff who are not vaccinated and who are not covered by exemptions?
Will the testing regime for NHS staff change?
Will visitors to hospitals be asked about their vaccination status?
What analysis has been done of vaccine hesitancy in the NHS workforce?
What more support will communities get to drive up vaccination rates?
Updated
Javid says MPs to get vote on plan for mandatory vaccination for frontline NHS staff in England from 1 April
Javid says the government has already made vaccination mandatory for staff in care homes from 11 November.
Since that was announced, the number of staff in care homes without at least one vaccine does has fallen from 88,000 to 32,000 at the start of last month.
He says the government consulted on mandatory vaccination for NHS staff. He says the evidence tips to one side, and he is making vaccination compulsory, in line with advice from NHS leaders and the NHS chief executive.
He says he has decided staff will have to get vaccinated. There will be two exceptions: for people who do not have face to face contact with patients, and for those who are medically exempt.
He says an impact assessment of the plan will be published. And MPs will get a vote. The measure will be introduced under the 2008 Health and Social Care Act.
The new rule will take effect 12 weeks after parliamentary approval, he says.
He says the government wants to new condition to apply to staff from 1 April.
Updated
Javid says despite the “fantastic rates of uptake”, MPs should encourage more people to get vaccinated.
Vaccination is an emotive topic, he says.
He says people working in health and social care have been “the best of us”, saving lives not only through their work, but by choosing to get vaccinated too.
He says 90% of NHS staff have chosen to get fully vaccinated, although in some trusts the figure is closer to 80%.
But he says NHS staff have a special responsibility. Their first duty is to avoid preventable harm to the people they care for.
And they have responsibilities to their colleagues too.
So “it cannot be business as usual when it comes to vaccination”, he says.
Updated
Sajid Javid's statement to MPs
Sajid Javid, the health secretary, is starting his statement to MPs now.
He says we are going into the winter “in a much stronger position than last year”.
That is mostly because of the vaccine programme, he says.
MPs will start a mini-recess tonight, meaning there will be no PMQs tomorrow. But the Lib Dems are saying it should be cancelled. Wendy Chamberlain, the Lib Dem chief whip, said:
Boris Johnson must not run and hide from this sleaze scandal. The Conservatives are hoping that they will be saved by the bell, so they don’t have to answer questions on these allegations. It is utterly unacceptable.
Any upstanding prime minister would show leadership and cancel parliament’s recess. Boris Johnson’s attempts to avoid accountability tells you all you need to know about this prime minister who is taking voters for granted.
Sajid Javid, the health secretary, is due to make a Commons statement soon in which he is expected to say that frontline NHS workers in England will have to be fully vaccinated.
In Northern Ireland Michelle O’Neill, the Sinn Féin deputy first minister, said that the health minister in the Northern Ireland executive (the UUP’s Robin Swann) had yet to make recommendations on this issue. But she said she would have concerns about mandatory vaccination. She said:
I have always been someone who would be more of an advocate of encouraging uptake of the vaccine, educating people as to why it’s so important and I think those people that work in the health service obviously understand that more than most.
So let’s have that conversation with the health minister and if he brings forward a proposal then I’ll obviously have to consider that.
I think mandatory vaccines are obviously something that is always going to come with its human rights concerns and others, so we have to take a decision based on having all that information.
Labour calls for inquiry into Cox's work for tax haven
Labour is calling for an inquiry into Sir Geoffrey Cox’s work for a tax haven, the British Virgin Islands. In an open letter to the prime minister, Anneliese Dodds, the Labour chair, say she asssumes that Boris Johnson was “as shocked as everyone else” to discover what Cox had been up to (see 9.40am) and that Cox’s constituents will be wondering whether they are represented by “a Caribbean-based barrister or a Conservative MP”.
But her letter mostly focuses on the work Cox was doing for the BVI, and whether this was appropriate for someone who until last year was the attorney general. She explains:
As we saw with Owen Paterson just last week, Geoffrey Cox’s behaviour raises serious questions about the conflicts of interest between MPs having second jobs that involve them lobbying or otherwise directly engaging with the government. Sir Geoffrey has been advising the Government of the BVI on behalf of Withersworldwide LLP (‘Withers’) during an inquiry into possible “corruption, abuse of office or other serious dishonesty that has taken place in public office in recent years” – an inquiry that was initiated by the British Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, part of the government Sir Geoffrey himself served in as recently as February 2020.
When approving his role at Withers, the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments (ACOBA) attached specific conditions to Sir Geoffrey’s appointment “to mitigate the potential risks to the government associated with this appointment” noting that in his case there were “unknown risks” as to what he might be asked to do on behalf of his new employer. He was required to “consult the AGO [Attorney General’s Office] at the earliest possible opportunity to seek advice in any case in which a risk might reasonably be considered to arise from a perception of overlap between your previous role and your new appointment”. He was also required not to draw on any privileged information available to him from his time in ministerial office, and for two years from his last day in ministerial office not to become personally involved in lobbying the UK government, not to make use – directly or indirectly – of his contacts in the government and/or Crown Service to influence policy, not to undertake any work that involves providing advice on bids or contracts relating directly to the work of the UK government, nor directly engage with the Attorney General’s Office on any other matters relating to Withers or their clients. ACOBA was clear that where Sir Geoffrey was in doubt he “must consult the Attorney General’s Office as to the appropriateness of any particular assignment”.
It is hard to see how those terms can have been met if Sir Geoffrey has been advising a known tax haven in relation to a corruption investigation opened by the UK government itself. We need answers as to what’s been happening here.
Dodds says it looks as if Cox would “rather get a tax haven off the hook than represent the interests of his constituents” and she asks Johnson if he is happy about that. She ends her letter:
One MP found guilty by a cross-party committee of an egregious breach of standards rules. Another jetting halfway round the world to help an administration accused of corruption in an inquiry initiated by the British government. All on your watch. This is a question of leadership, prime minister. It’s time to act.
Updated
No 10 says MPs will now get second chance to approve report saying Owen Paterson broke lobbying rules
The Downing Street lobby briefing has just finished. Here are the key points.
- Downing Street has implicitly critcised Sir Geoffrey Cox for the extent of his work outside parliament. At the briefing the No 10 spokesman said Johnson thought that serving constituents should be the “primary” role for an MP. But the spokesman did not criticise Cox directly, or suggest that he should resign as an MP, arguing that ultimately it was for the voters to judge him. The spokesman said:
[MPs] should be visible in constituencies and available to help our constituents with their constituency matters. If they’re not doing that, they’re not doing their job and will rightly be judged on that by their constituents ...
[The PM wants being an MP] to be the primary job [for MPs] and for MPs to serve their constituents. It’s incumbent on MPs to be visible and to demonstrate to their constituents that they are acting on behalf of them. But it is up to our constituents to make that judgment.
The spokesman would not say whether Johnson had any regrets about not following his advice himself for a year. He was re-elected to parliament, as MP for Uxbridge and South Ruislip, in May 2015, but at the time he was mayor of London. He did not give up his mayoral post until May 2016, and during that year his presence in the Commons was relatively limited because he was mostly focused on his mayoral job.
According to the Mirror’s Dan Bloom, Cox was spending an average of 22 hours per week on legal work over the past year.
NEW: I've run the numbers on Geoffrey Cox's second job(s)... the QC spent an average of 22 hours A WEEK in the last year on lucrative legal work - on top of his £81k job as an MPhttps://t.co/neuezSBloQ
— Dan Bloom (@danbloom1) November 9, 2021
- The spokesman said Johnson was opposed to an “outright ban on second jobs” for MPs. The spokesman said Johnson thought an outright ban would be wrong, because it would stop MPs working, for example, as part-time doctors or nurses. But the spokesman would not say whether Johnson favoured a ban on MPs working as political consultants. He said the rules on second jobs for MPs were a matter for the Commons.
- The spokesman confirmed that MPs would get a second chance to approve the standards committee report saying Owen Paterson broke Commons rules. The motion would be tabled today, the spokesman said. It would rescind the vote last week that proposed setting up a new committee chaired by John Whittingdale, and allow MPs to approve the report criticising Paterson, even though Paterson is no longer an MP. MPs will vote on the motion next week, after the mini-recess starting tonight. This sounds like a possible U-turn because in the Commons yesterday Stephen Barclay, the Cabinet Office minister, implied there would not be a second vote.
- No 10 would not say that Johnson was sorry for what happened last week. Asked if the PM was sorry, the spokesman just referred journalists to what Johnson said in an interview about this yesterday (when he refused to apologise). The spokesman also referred to what Stephen Barclay said yesterday, about the government regretting what happened. When it was put to him that, because he would not say the PM was sorry, people would conclude Johnson was not sorry, the spokesman said the government thought it was regrettable that the vote last week conflated the Owen Paterson issue with the general issue of standards reform.
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Labour challenges government to explain how levelling up funding distributed
Labour is calling for the government to “come clean” about exactly how levelling up money for individual constituencies is distributed. It said if the criteria for funding was clear, it would not be possible for Tory whips to threaten to withhold cash from places where the local MP was defying the government whip.
Steve Reed, the shadow communities secretary, told the Today programme:
There’s growing concern that ministers are misusing their power and potentially breaching the ministerial code of conduct to coerce MPs by making threats to funding for their constituents and that is a severely damaging approach for the government to be taking. [See 11.24am.]
What we’ve had is a whole series of questions raised about how these different pots of money, different regeneration funds, are being governed and how they’re being applied to different constituencies.
And what we’re calling on Michael Gove today to do - the secretary of state for levelling up - is to come clean about all conversations between ministers and MPs about the proposed bids, whether that’s the towns fund, the levelling up fund or other regeneration funds, but also to be clear about what the selection criteria are for funding so that it’s no longer possible, if that was published, for ministers to corruptly seek to influence decisions in order to coerce MPs.
Raab unable to confirm that no rebel Tory MPs were threatened with potential loss of constituency funding
And here are some more lines from Dominic Raab’s interviews this morning on sleaze/standards/corruption issues.
- Raab insisted government constituency spending decisions were not related to whether or not the local MP defied the whip - although he did not deny that threats of this kind may have been made to some Tories. He told the Today programme:
I’m not in the whips’ office, but I can tell you that government decisions on where investment is made [is] not to take in those political considerations. They’re taken with very clear processes that are followed.
Asked if threats to punish MPs by withholding funding from their constituencies may have been made, Raab said:
Well, I can’t tell you what happened between the whips and individual MPs, what I can tell you is that there are no Government decisions on investment across the country, that would have political influence beyond the correct official criteria, processes, procedures to make sure that money goes where it’s needed most and where it’s required.
There have been various reports that threats of this kind were made to rebel Tories last week, although no MP has gone on the record to confirm this. Similar claims have been made in the past, as my colleague Aubrey Allegretti reported in September. The most detailed article on this topic may be this one by Paul Goodman for ConservativeHome. Goodman’s verdict is that the evidence is inclusive. Here is an extract.
MPs who I’ve spoken to agree that, in a few cases, the government attempted to withdraw funding to which it was already committed from towns represented by independent-minded backbenchers, pleading new pressures on public spending.
But there is no agreement about why it did so. One backbencher says he was told that the whips had compiled a list of MPs who would be affected; that the Treasury was responsible for the list – and that, after he made representations, the funding was restored. At no time was he told that the way in which he had voted or spoken was responsible for the planned cut.
Another tells much the same tale, but with a twist: that, though he wasn’t told by either the whips or the Treasury that the way in which he had spoken or voted was responsible … he was told by other ministers that the way in which he had voted and spoken was responsible.
- Raab was unable to explain why Boris Johnson has refused to apologise for the Owen Paterson vote debacle. On the Today programme Raab was asked this seven times. Raab said he could not speak for the PM directly, but he said that Stephen Barclay, the Cabinet Office minister, expressed regret for what happened yesterday, and he said he was happy to also express regret for this himself.
- Raab rejected claims that the Tories were effectively selling peerages to donors. He said:
In relation to becoming appointed to the House of Lords there’s also very clear rules.
I would just say that, of course, people who are entrepreneurs but also engaged in public service, whether that’s charities, whether that’s supporting political parties, do a public service. And certainly we benefit when the Conservative party has a treasurer ... people who’ve got that kind of experience.
Sajid Javid, the health secretary, will make a statement in the Commons later on Covid, it has just been announced. Presumably he will announce the plan to make vaccination compulsory for frontline NHS staff in England.
There are two urgent questions first, on Bosnia and Herzegovina, and racism in cricket, and so the Javid statement will probably not start until around 2pm.
Chris Hopson, chief executive of NHS Providers, which represents hospitals and other NHS trusts, has also expressed concern about the plan to make vaccines mandatory for frontline NHS staff in England. (See 10.41am.) He told the the BBC Radio 5 Live this morning:
You just have to look at what is happening in the care sector - the deadline for [care homes] is November 11 and they are saying they are very worried about the number of staff that they may lose as a result of this.
So that’s why we have said to the government, we understand why you are doing this but please could you work closely with us to manage that risk?
So yes we are worried, but the whole point is doing everything we can to ensure that risk of losing staff doesn’t materialise.
Northern Ireland secretary tests positive for Covid
As my colleague Aubrey Allgretti reported yesterday, there were 114 cases of Covid among people working in parliament last month. Today there is another, with the Northern Ireland secretary, Brandon Lewis, saying he has tested positive.
😷 I have tested positive for coronavirus. Thanks to the vaccine I am so far only experiencing mild symptoms. I have been self isolating since I first experienced signs of symptoms and following my positive PCR result I will continue to do so in line with Government regulations.
— Brandon Lewis (@BrandonLewis) November 9, 2021
Less than three weeks ago Jacob Rees-Mogg, the leader of the Commons, was defending the then refusal of most Tory MPs to wear masks in the Commons chamber, saying there was no need because they all knew each other, and shared “convivial fraternal spirit”. But since then habits have changed, and Conservative MPs have started wearing masks more often.
Making vaccines mandatory for frontline NHS workers in England would be 'really risky', says Unison
The Unison union, which represents many health workers, has said that forcing frontline NHS staff in England to be fully vaccinated would be a mistake.
Sara Gorton, the union’s head of health, told the Today programme this morning that making vaccination mandatory would be “really risky” because it could have “really, really difficult consequences for the NHS in what we know is going to be a really difficult winter”.
She said:
This isn’t about saying that it’s wrong, the vaccination programme is wrong, it’s saying that it is wrong to leap to the law, rather than stick with persuasion, conversation, peer group support to try and increase those rates beyond what is, let’s face it, a really, really high existing level of vaccination amongst NHS staff.
According to the BBC’s health editor, Hugh Pym, an announcement on this is coming today.
NHS frontline workers in England will be required to be fully vaccinated against COVID by next spring. Announcement today according to Whitehall sources. Exemptions for medical reasons. Timetable set to allow gap between doses - 90% NHS staff in England currently vaccinated.
— Hugh Pym (@BBCHughPym) November 9, 2021
Dominic Raab, the deputy prime minister, all but confirmed the announcement on ITV’s Good Morning Britain this morning when he said the government had looked at “every alternative” to compulsion. He said:
I think ultimately that we’ve got to make sure that the lives of those people in those vulnerable settings are safeguarded, and that’s a difficult choice, that’s one of the many difficult choices that we’ve got in government.
But I think we’d be getting a lot of criticism if we weren’t taking those difficult decisions, and we were leaving people more and unnecessarily exposed than before.
Updated
NHS Confederation says Johnson should show better example on mask wearing
The NHS Confederation, which represents NHS leaders, has joined those criticising Boris Johnson for not wearing a mask at certain points during his visit to a hospital yesterday. Matthew Taylor, the confederation’s chief executive, told Sky News:
The prime minister is an incredibly influential figure and what he does is important. I think it was unfortunate that he was seen in a hospital setting not wearing a mask because I think this hospital, like every hospital, would encourage people to be wearing masks, not just in wards but in the hospital as a whole.
I’m not interested in criticising him individually - it’s a tough job being prime minister - but it goes to the fact that we do need a strong message from the centre.
Asked about this in his morning interview round, Dominic Raab, the deputy prime minister, said Johnson was following the rules that applied. He told Sky News:
I know the prime minister took the advice on the clinical setting that he was in and followed all the protocols and procedures that were applied there, and that’s what everyone should do.
The trust that runs the hospital, Northumbria NHS healthcare, has defended Johnson. It posted this on Twitter yesterday.
Please be assured that infection prevention and control remains an utmost priority for our Trust. The Prime Minister Boris Johnson followed strict measures, including wearing a mask, in each clinical area he visited
— NorthumbriaNHS (@NorthumbriaNHS) November 8, 2021
Updated
A total of 859 deaths registered in England and Wales in the week ending 29 October mentioned Covid-19 on the death certificate, PA Media reports. PA says:
This is up 8% on the previous week and is the highest number since the week to 24 September.
Around one in 13 (7.8%) of all deaths registered in England and Wales in the week to 29 October mentioned Covid-19 on the death certificate, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
The ONS also said a total of 167,367 deaths have occurred in the UK where Covid-19 was mentioned on the death certificate.
The highest number on a single day was 1,484 on 19 January.
During the first wave of the virus, the daily toll peaked at 1,461 on 8 April 2020.
As the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg reports, Labour is challenging Boris Johnson to condemn Geoffrey Cox.
Labour chair, Annelise Dodds is writing to Boris Johnson to demand he decides if Geoffrey Cox is a 'Caribbean based barrister or a Conservative MP', saying it's a 'question of leadership' for the PM
— Laura Kuenssberg (@bbclaurak) November 9, 2021
And this, from the Spectator’s James Forsyth, explains why this is potentially such a lucrative line of attack for the opposition.
On MPs’ second jobs, Boris Johnson increasingly facing a choice between being on the wrong side of public opinion or the wrong side of his senior MPs
— James Forsyth (@JGForsyth) November 9, 2021
Note the reference to “senior MPs” in Forsyth’s tweet. One bonus about using second jobs as a wedge issue against Johnson is that it doesn’t just open up a division between the Tories and public opinion; it aggravates the split between the Tory old guard in parliament (who were defending Owen Paterson most vigorously), and the 2019 “red wall intake”, who don’t have outside earnings like Cox’s and who may feel about this much the same way as Anneliese Dodds does.
This is from Wendy Chamberlain, the Lib Dem chief whip, on the Geoffrey Cox story.
The public will rightly be gobsmacked by these reports.
Why was a Tory MP apparently spending time on the other side of the world advising a known tax haven instead of supporting his constituents? For the justice secretary to defend this behaviour as legitimate is frankly astonishing.
The bigger irony here is that the government has ordered an inquiry into corruption and political cronyism in the British Virgin Islands, while refusing to carry one out at home.
Raab says it’s up to voters to decide whether Geoffrey Cox’s £1m outside earnings appropriate
Good morning. Boris Johnson may have been hoping that, after yesterday, outrage about Tory sleaze would have passed the high water mark and that the news agenda would start to move on. But it hasn’t worked out like that, and this morning the whole sleaze/misconduct/corruption issue has got second wind and is back with a vengeneance. Alex Wickham in his London Playbook briefing has a good round-up of all the new developments, but the highlight is the Daily Mail splash, by Harriet Line and Jason Groves, which starts like this.
A Tory MP has earned hundreds of thousands of pounds from a second job that saw him vote in Parliament remotely from the Caribbean.
Geoffrey Cox, a QC and former attorney general, is advising the government of the British Virgin Islands, a tax haven accused of corruption.
He took advantage of lockdown rules to cast votes in the Commons by proxy as he worked 4,000 miles away on the lucrative contract earlier this year, a source disclosed.
Sir Geoffrey yesterday revealed he has earned more than £1million from outside legal work over the past year on top of his £82,000 salary as a backbencher.
MAIL: Top MP warns fortune for working in tax haven #TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/Rd4rZQPXwH
— Neil Henderson (@hendopolis) November 8, 2021
The Mail is not alleging that Cox has broken any laws. But, as MPs discovered during the expenses scandal, what matters in the court of public opinion (a judicial environment where Cox’s skills are well below QC level) is what people think is approporiate, not what’s legal.
Dominic Raab, the deputy prime minister, was on morning interview round duty for the government. As justice secretary, he would normally be expected to applaud a British lawyer making good money abroad, but obviously that wasn’t the line to take today.
Asked about Cox, and whether it is right for an MP to be spending so much time on a second job instead of representing his consitituents, Raab’s first response was to say that the fact that we know about this was a victory for transparency, and the rules that force MPs to declare their earnings and their hours in cases like this.
Raab said it was legitimate for Cox to be advising a foreign government on legal matters in this way. He told Times Radio:
In relation to the British Virgin Islands, I was the foreign secretary that commissioned a commission of inquiry, given the allegations of misgovernance and very serious ones, including criminal wrongdoing.
Now, I’m not going to get dragged into what individual MPs do, but actually having the former attorney general - and it wasn’t my decision, he was hired by the government of the BVI to advise them on how to correct and deal and address those allegations - actually, is a legitimate thing to do as long as it’s properly declared.
And of course, it’s quite important in that parliament, which is responsible residually for some areas of our relationship with the overseas territories, we’ve got some knowledge of what’s going on in those territories.
But on the wider question of whether an MP should be spending so much time on a second job, and earning so much from it, Raab was equivocal. He would not defend Cox. But he did not criticise him either, and instead he said it was up to Cox’s constituents to decide what was right. Asked if he was “comfortable” with this, Raab told the Today programme:
As I made very clear, it’s not for me to get comfortable or otherwise with it.
It’s for the voters in any individual constituency to look at the record of their MP and decide whether they got the right priorities.
That sounded like a vague hint that the Conservative association in Torridge and West Devon, or the electorate there as a whole, might be justified in finding a new MP at the next election.
I will post more on Raab’s interviews shortly.
Here is the agenda for the day.
10am: Michelle Stanistreet, general secretary of the National Union of Journalists, and Lexie Kirkconnell-Kawana, head of regulation at Impress, give evidence to the Commons culture committee on the online harms bill.
11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.
2pm: A minister gives a statement in the Scottish parliament on Covid.
2.30pm: The British Retail Consortium, the Cold Chain Federation and UK Hospitality give evidence to the Commons environment committee on labour shortages; at 3.30pm Ben Broadbent, deputy governor of the Bank of England, gives evidence.
Also, according to the BBC, the government will today confirm that Covid vaccines will be compulsory for NHS frontline staff in England from next spring.
I try to monitor the comments below the line (BTL) but it is impossible to read them all. If you have a direct question, do include “Andrew” in it somewhere and I’m more likely to find it. I do try to answer questions, and if they are of general interest, I will post the question and reply above the line (ATL), although I can’t promise to do this for everyone.
If you want to attract my attention quickly, it is probably better to use Twitter. I’m on @AndrewSparrow.
Alternatively, you can email me at andrew.sparrow@theguardian.com
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