Afternoon summary
- Boris Johnson has said he will publish his text messages and “make absolutely no apology” for the exchanges with businessman James Dyson promising to “fix” the tax status for the firm to help build ventilators. As Jessica Elgot reports, Keir Starmer accused the government of “sleaze, sleaze, sleaze” after leaked texts from Johnson promised that the pro-Brexit billionaire’s employees would not have to pay extra tax if they came to the UK to make ventilators during the pandemic.
- Johnny Mercer, who was dismissed as veterans minister last night after letting it be known he intended to resign, has told Times Radio that he found government a “cesspit” where almost no one told the truth. Explaining how he wanted to leave because he felt the government was not honouring its commitment to veterans, he said:
This is the most distrustful, awful environment I’ve ever worked in, in government. Almost nobody tells the truth is what I’ve worked out over the last 36 hours. And, you know, I don’t think anyone really can get on their high horse about trust and ethics and all the rest of it in politics, because as far as I’m concerned, most of it is a bit of a cesspit.
He also said:
I think it’s pretty clear that not everyone tells the truth up here, do they? I mean, I told people I was resigning as a courtesy to government. You know, three hours later it’s in the press. And an hour later there’s someone following me around London with a camera. And, of course, they all denied they ever leaked it. You know, it’s ridiculous. But you know that is politics. And it’s the silly games of politics I’m just not interested in.
- Dominic Raab, the foreign secretary, has announced in a Commons written statement that aid to China will be slashed by 95% to less than £1m.
That’s all from me for today. But our coronavirus coverage continues on our global live blog. It’s here.
Updated
A total of 36,805,597 Covid-19 vaccinations took place in England between 8 December and 20 April, according to NHS England data, including first and second doses, which is a rise of 357,800 on the previous day.
As PA Media reports, NHS England said 27,798,505 were the first dose of a vaccine, a rise of 84,871 on the previous day, while 9,007,092 were a second dose, an increase of 272,929.
The care regulator has said it is not aware of any care home in England that is failing to follow government guidance on allowing visits, PA Media reports. PA says:
Peter Wyman, chairman of the Care Quality Commission (CQC), said the watchdog has followed up and intervened where appropriate when concerns have been raised about visiting rights not being respected or blanket bans.
But he told the joint committee on human rights that the CQC does not hold quantitative data on how many visits have occurred across the providers it regulates.
Last week the committee heard evidence from the campaign group Rights for Residents, which committee chairwoman Harriet Harman described as being “awash with anecdotal evidence” about visiting rights not being respected.
Current guidance says every care home resident can nominate up to two named visitors who will be able to enter the care home for regular visits.
In addition, residents with the highest care needs can nominate an essential care giver.
Wyman told MPs: “Now, at this moment, we are not aware of any home that is not providing appropriate visiting rights, and ... where we have been contacted by relatives who have said ‘we haven’t got the visiting rights’, we have pursued that, and we’ve satisfied ourselves that either the visiting rights were always there and it was a communication failure, or there needed to be a change, so that the home has changed and the visiting rights are now there.
“So I can absolutely say that as of today, as of this moment, we are not aware of any home that is not making appropriate visiting rights in accordance with government guidance.”
The Scottish Tories have disputed claims by the Scottish National party and BBC that Nicola Sturgeon was not expected to take part in a Question Time special on the Scottish elections being aired on Thursday night. (See 3.30pm.)
The Scottish Conservative MSP Annie Wells said the party was approached by Question Time producers on 8 March with an explicit pitch for “all five main party leaders” to appear on the programme; they asked specifically for Douglas Ross, the Scottish Tory leader. Wells said:
As early as the 8th of March, BBC bosses were telling the Scottish Conservatives they wanted all five party leaders. Question Time clearly asked for Nicola Sturgeon and they’ve been forced to accept her lackey instead.
Scottish Labour officials said the show’s producers had been clear they wanted the programme to be a leaders’ special. Labour, the Tories, Scottish Greens and Liberal Democrats are all putting up their Scottish leaders. The SNP’s deputy leader, Keith Brown, is appearing in place of Sturgeon.
BBC officials have denied that was the case, and said the Thursday edition, being filmed in western Edinburgh on Thursday evening, was an ordinary Question Time.
Asked about the Tories’ challenge, the SNP stood by its statement earlier on Wednesday that before the election campaign began the BBC had only asked Sturgeon to appear on two BBC Scotland’s leaders’ debates. The campaign began on 25 March.
UPDATE: A BBC spokesperson later said:
Ahead of the Scotland edition of Question Time, producers made contact with all of the main political parties and invited the leaders to come on the programme. However, it was never indicated or implied that this was a leaders special or that other representatives, such as deputy leaders, wouldn’t be welcome.
Updated
UK medical research has lost almost £300m because of Covid's impact on charities, MPs told
Medical research charities lost nearly £300m in the past year as the Covid crisis cancelled fundraising events, wiped out street donations and closed charity shops, MPs have been told.
Hilary Reynolds, chief executive of the Association of Medical Research Charities, told the Commons science and technology committee on Wednesday the pandemic had caused a “catastrophic loss of fundraised income” which amounted to a “real and present emergency”.
The charities pay for more than half of the UK’s publicly-funded medical research - more than the National Institute of Health Research and the Medical Research Council combined. The shortfall in funds has led to clinical trials being suspended, projects cancelled and future grant rounds scrapped.
The charities range from major players such as Cancer Research UK and the British Heart Foundation to smaller, specialised charities such as the Brain Tumour Charity and Autistica, an autism research charity.
Reynolds told the committee:
Our charities have seen a drop in income of at least £292m since the start of pandemic. Two out of three of our charities have seen a huge drop in income, which of course translates into the funding they can put into research. It’s a real and present emergency.
The loss amounts to a £270m cut to UK medical research, she added.
While funding will bounce back as the economy recovers, this will take time and it could be more than three years before charities are able to resume funding for medical research at previous levels, Reynolds said. The charities have sought temporary funding from the government so their research can carry on, but have not received any support.
“This isn’t about money to charities, it’s about money for the medical research that charities fund,” Reynolds told the MPs.
The government recently announced funds to cover the UK’s subscription to the huge Horizon Europe research programme, but cuts to the foreign aid budget and the substantial drop in medical charity funding will still take a toll.
“The medical research charities are not a ‘nice to have’, they are an essential and integral part of the ecosystem and they have a temporary emergency,” Reynolds told the MPs. She went on:
We know that funding will bounce back, but we are looking for temporary financial support to protect existing research and to enable new research to get going so that the long-term impact on careers and research talent and projects that can bring new treatments and hope are not damaged irreversibly.
Updated
Downing Street has announced that the Havant MP Alan Mak is being made a government whip, replacing Leo Docherty, who has been promoted to defence minister. (See 11.01am.) Mak will be unpaid.
By law, there is a limit on the number of paid ministers or whips allowed in government, and so it is not unusual for governments to insist on some of the most junior members taking posts that are unpaid.
Updated
‘Bizarre’ UK comments about Australia’s trade minister a ‘serious setback’ to talks
As my colleague Daniel Hurst reports, the anti-Australia briefing from Liz Truss’s Department for International Trade (see 2.52pm and 4.12pm) has been described as a “serious setback” by one expert. Jeffrey Wilson, the research director of the Perth USAsia Centre at the University of Western Australia, said:
This ‘backgrounding’ – which includes unprovoked ad hominem directed against the Australian trade minister – is bizarre.
In nearly 20 years working on trade negotiations, I have never seen personal attacks deployed as a negotiating tactic. It is an unfortunate but serious setback for what should have been friendly negotiations.
Daniel’s story is here.
Updated
As the Independent’s Andrew Woodcock reports, a briefing from Liz Truss’s Department for International Trade about how Truss intends to use hardline tactics against her “inexperienced” Australian opposite number (see 2.52pm) has gone down very badly in Australia. The UK’s high commissioner in Australia has had to go on TV to try to defuse the row triggered by the remarks.
And it turns out that although Dan Tehan only became Australia’s trade minister in December, he has been working on trade policy in one capacity or another for more than 20 years. Truss became trade secretary less than two years ago, with no previous experience of international trade negotiations.
Updated
The Commons home affairs committee has launched an inquiry into violence against women and girls. Explaining its purpose, Yvette Cooper, the committee chair, said:
Women across the country have been speaking out about their experiences of violence, abuse, stalking, and feeling unsafe - be it on our streets, in schools or at home. Everyone agrees that violence against women and girls is abhorrent, yet far too little has changed in practice to improve women’s safety and in some areas things have got worse. T
This inquiry will examine the many forms that violence against women and girls takes in our society, what action is being taken to end the scourge of violence against women and girls, and how it is currently being addressed by government, the police and the criminal justice system.
Details of the terms of reference for the inquiry, and how to submit evidence, are here.
City University of London will change the name of its business school from John Cass, a former slave trader, to 18th century statistician Thomas Bayes, as part of a wider drive to improve its record on diversity.
The name change follows pressure from thousands of students and staff, who criticised City for commemorating a prominent figure in the early stages of the Atlantic slave trade. The school’s name “embodies the racist and inhumane nature of his actions”, they said.
The university asked staff and students to submit ideas for a new name, and then vote on a shortlist, with Bayes emerging the clear favourite. Bayes is a celebrated mathematician whose thinking forms the foundation for artificial intelligence and machine learning. He is buried in Bunhill Fields, opposite the business school.
As part of City’s diversity plans, the business school unveiled ten full scholarships with a £6,000 annual stipend for its undergraduate degrees targeted at black pupils based in the UK, which will run for a decade. City will also fund five PhD scholarships for black British students.
Updated
Opposition parties have accused Nicola Sturgeon of “going Awol” after it emerged the Scottish National party leader would not take part in a BBC Question Time Scottish leaders’ programme tomorrow.
Opposition parties claimed the Question Time programme, being broadcast from Edinburgh, had been clearly pitched to them by its producers at Mentorn as “an event for party leaders”. That was disputed by BBC sources, who said it was always open to parties to decide who to offer; the BBC insisted it was a regular edition of the show.
Up against Anas Sarwar, the Scottish Labour leader, Douglas Ross for the Tories, Willie Rennie for the Lib Dems, and Lorna Slater, co-leader of the Scottish Greens, the SNP will be represented by Keith Brown, the party’s deputy leader and an MSP.
Alistair Carmichael, the Lib Dem MP coordinating his party’s Holyrood campaign, said:
Despite what SNP spin doctors might say, it is obvious that they are trying to protect Nicola Sturgeon’s reputation from further damage caused by SNP failures.
It’s an insult to voters to put up Keith Brown, a man who was shuffled out of the SNP government after his disastrous involvement in a failed Chinese investment that its own fixer described as ‘all bollocks’.
The Scottish Labour MP Ian Murray said:
Nicola Sturgeon is treating this election like a coronation tour - hiding from scrutiny from the press and public. People deserve the right to question their leaders and running scared just confirms the woeful state of the SNP’s record.
The SNP said the BBC had only ever asked Sturgeon to appear in two leaders’ debates and had not mentioned Question Time before the election campaign began; she was now booked to do a phone-in with voters on Thursday evening. A spokesperson said:
The first minister has been scrutinised by the media nearly every day over the last year and since the campaign began has taken part in numerous hustings, two TV debates and a number of interviews as well as meeting members of the public to answer their question directly.
Updated
One adult in five in UK now fully vaccinated, latest figures show
One adult in five in the UK is now fully vaccinated against coroanvirus, PA Media’s Ian Jones reports.
One in five adults in the UK are now fully vaccinated against Covid-19.
— Ian Jones (@ian_a_jones) April 21, 2021
Wales continues to lead the other nations, having given both doses to nearly a quarter of adults. pic.twitter.com/FDDcNwwbqP
No 10 confirms Johnson is setting up Blair-style delivery unit in Downing Street
Here are the key points from the Downing Street lobby briefing.
- Boris Johnson is setting up a new delivery unit in No 10, the PM’s spokesperson confirmed. This will replicate a unit set up by Tony Blair when he was prime minister that was tasked with ensuring that departments actually achieved their policy aims. It is being set up following advice from Michael Barber, who ran the Blair unit and how has been reviewing the operation of No 10 for Johnson. It will be headed by Dr Emily Lawson, who was in charge of the vaccination rollout for the NHS. Barber would “continue to provide support” as the new unit gets up and running, the spokesman said. He added:
The new team will be made up of both existing civil servants and those with key skills such as auditors and data scientists.
The unit will work closely with No 10 teams, the Cabinet Office, Treasury, relevant government departments to further improve policy delivery and ensure we are delivering on our commitments swiftly.
- The spokesperson rejected suggestions that Johnson’s text message exchanges with James Dyson broke the ministerial code. Asked about this, the spokesperson said:
The prime minister abides by the ministerial code. He alerted officials after his contact with Dyson and then that passed on to officials to work up the advice. It came to the house, it was voted on in parliament.
- The spokesperson rejected suggestions that Dyson would have had a commercial advantage from the tax concessions offered by the PM. Dyson’s head office is based abroad, and the company wanted an assurance that staff would be able to visit the UK to work on the ventilator project without having to pay extra tax. The spokesperson dismissed the idea that this would have advantaged the firm because he said firms offering to produce ventilators for the government were doing that at cost, and not for profit. And he said the rule change was about ensuring staff were not penalised for visiting the UK, not about giving them a new benefit.
- The spokesperson refused to speculate on how the Johnson/Dyson text exchanges were made public. But he ruled out a leak inquiry.
- The spokesperson was unable to say when the PM would publish his text message exchanges relating to Covid contracts, as he promised in the Commons. (See 1.40pm.) The spokesperson said he had not had a chance to discuss this with Johnson since PMQs.
- The spokesperson refused to give any more details of the legislation mentioned by Johnson at PMQs to protect Northern Ireland veterans from prosecution in relation to historic cases. (See 12.23pm.) But he said the legislation would appear “in the coming weeks”.
- The spokesperson refused to back what are reported to be plans by Liz Truss, the international trade secretary, to adopt a confrontational approach with her Australian opposite number in trade talks. According to a report by Lucy Fisher in the Telegraph Truss thinks Dan Tehan needs to be made to speed up progress towards a deal when he is in London this week. Fisher reports:
The source close to Ms Truss quipped: ‘She plans to sit him down in the Locarno room [in the Foreign Office] in an uncomfortable chair, so he has to deal with her directly for nine hours.’
The ally said that Mr Tehan and Ms Truss had struck up a good rapport, but added: ‘He is inexperienced compared to Liz. He needs to show that he can play at this level.
‘Australia need to show us the colour of their money. They’re great friends of ours and talk a good game about free trade and wanting a deal, but they need to match those words with action.’
Asked if it was true that Tehan would be placed in an uncomfortable chair for nine hours, the spokesperson just said Australia was an important ally and that the two countries were working closely on an ambitious trade deal.
- Rosie Bate-Williams would replace Allegra Stratton as Johnson’s press secretary, the spokesperson said. Bate-Williams is currently working in No 10 as a special adviser dealing with the media.
- The spokesperson said the new £2.6m media suite at 9 Downing Street would continue to be used for ministerial press conferences. He said:
During the pandemic we have seen the benefits of ministers, including the prime minister, and other experts conducting press conferences and being able to speak directly to the public. So with that in mind a decision was taken to continue to use the studio in No 9 for ministerial press conferences, so the public can hear direct from their elected representatives.
The room will continue to be used regularly. The prime minister used it yesterday for the press conference, it will be used for the US climate leaders’ summit on Thursday so you will continue to see it regularly on your screens.
Updated
'Conventional, complacent, same-old-same-old' - Salmond's Alba manifesto attacks record of SNP government
Alex Salmond and his new Alba party have launched a direct attack on Nicola Sturgeon’s policies as first minister, as he unveiled Alba’s manifesto with a pledge to stop any further “backsliding” on independence if elected.
Salmond, once Sturgeon’s mentor and boss as first minister and Scottish National party leader, claimed Alba was “without doubt” the only party in the Holyrood election taking the quest for independence seriously.
In an explicit pitch to disgruntled SNP voters to use their second, list, vote for Alba as he unveiled his party’s manifesto, Salmond said his party would inject urgency into the campaign for a fresh referendum and independence. He said:
We’ll do that every day we’re in parliament, pressuring a pro-independence Scottish govt to get a move on and holding it to account if it doesn’t.
The 57-page Alba manifesto made a series of direct and implicit criticisms of Sturgeon’s track record, ignoring the fact that Salmond led the SNP government for half of the 14 years it has been in office, and the SNP for 20 of the last 31 years.
Emblazoned with a photograph of a wet dog vigorously shaking itself dry, the manifesto was sub-titled: “More of the same won’t cut it.” Casting itself as an insurrectionist force, it said the Scottish government and Holyrood had recently been too cautious and too timid.
“Scotland’s economic policy has become stale, conventional, complacent, the same-old-same-old,” it said. Calling for a “powerful” independent inquiry into Sturgeon’s handling of the Covid crisis, it accused her of “hiding behind” a four-nations’ strategy on the pandemic.
Alba claimed Scotland’s education system had slumped into mediocrity; the NHS had failed to prioritise ill-health prevention; Scotland’s workers had been let down; ministers were too obsessed by targets and Holyrood had centralised power.
And in a further pitch to voters unhappy with Sturgeon’s pro-trans policies - criticisms voiced often by female SNP MSPs and MPs - the manifesto pledged to ensure the “search for equality is reconciled with women’s hard-won search for sex-based rights”.
It is unclear how many voters will be attracted by Salmond’s new-found positioning as a guerrilla leader, but senior SNP leaders fear he may be elected on 6 May on the north east list. But once at Holyrood, he faces being a marginal force. Sturgeon will not work with him.
Updated
Lord McFall elected next Lords Speaker
Lord McFall of Alcluith, a former Labour minister and former chair of the Commons Treasury committee, has been elected as the fourth Lord Speaker of the House of Lords.
As PA Media reports, McFall, who joined the Lords in 2010, has served as senior deputy speaker since 2016, overseeing work to revamp the house’s select committees and to develop new procedures for hybrid working during the coronavirus pandemic. He replaces Lord Fowler, who will step down from the role at the end of the month and return to the red benches.
In a statement following his election McFall said:
As a house we face some fundamental challenges, the most immediate being how we return safely to Westminster in greater numbers once the current restrictions are relaxed, while harnessing the technical and procedural innovations that have enabled us to operate so differently over the past year. The huge restoration and renewal programme for the palace is entering a critical phase while the digital transformation of parliament will also need to gather momentum in the years ahead.
The valuable and often unheralded work of the House of Lords and its members contributes to improving the lives of millions of people, but I know we need to do more to tell our story and to explain the value that we bring.
In the election McFall beat two other candidates, Lord Alderdice and Lady Hayter. Here are the results.
New Lord Speaker elected on the Alternative Vote system. L McFall had a small lead in the first round & exceeded the 50% threshold in round 2 by gaining most of Bs Hayter's supporters 2nd preference votes. L Alderdice a v. respectable second. Nearly 150 eligible Peers didn't vote pic.twitter.com/rjoJceojYs
— Richard Chapman (@SelsdonChapman) April 21, 2021
Updated
Offering under-30s alternative to AstraZeneca jab has not increased vaccine hesitancy, research suggests
The decision to offer the under-30s an alternative to the AstraZeneca vaccine over blood clotting concerns has had no impact on people’s intention of getting the jab, new research suggests. PA Media has the story and it says:
New UK guidance was issued on 7 April recommending that people aged 18 to 29 should be offered the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines after the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) said there is a possible link between the AstraZeneca jab and “extremely rare” blood clots.
Several European countries including France, Germany and Italy suspended use of the vaccine in March over the link, although they later said they would resume its rollout.
University of Stirling researchers have been collecting data for a wider project on fear and concerns related to Covid-19 and they examined whether public concern about the AstraZeneca jab led to “vaccine hesitancy”.
They carried out a survey after news of the European suspensions emerged in mid-March, and they found no drop in the proportion of people who said they intended to get the vaccine.
Researchers carried out another survey on 9 April after guidance on vaccinating the under-30s changed and found only a slight change in people’s intentions.
On 9 April they found that 85.7% of respondents said they intended to get the vaccine compared with 86.1% on 17 March.
They also found little change in the 30-to-40 age group, who will continue to be offered the AstraZeneca vaccine.
Updated
Labour has said it welcomes Boris Johnson’s “commitment” to publishing his communication with business leaders on coronavirus contracts. (See 1.23pm.) Rachel Reeves, the shadow Cabinet Office minister, said:
Given the shocking revelations this morning and a serious lack of transparency for months, we welcome the prime minister’s commitment to publish his text messages with business leaders in prime minister’s questions today.
Since we also have no independent adviser on ministerial standards in place, and no register of ministers’ financial interests published for nine months, these texts must immediately be made public.
In response to a question from the SNP’s Ian Blackford, who asked the PM to “reveal today how many more Covid contracts he personally fixed, and if he has nothing to hide ... [to] publish all personal exchanges on these contracts before the end of the day”, Boris Johnson told MPs:
There’s absolutely nothing to conceal about this and I am happy to share all the details with the house, as indeed I have shared them with my officials immediately.
But quite what Downing Street intends to publish is not yet clear. Labour seems to be hoping for details of all his text messages with business leaders. Johnson may be planning to release little more than what has already been revealed today by the BBC. (See 9.01am.)
Updated
Boris Johnson says he will publish text messages to James Dyson
Boris Johnson has said he will publish his text messages and “make absolutely no apology” for the exchanges with businessman James Dyson promising to “fix” tax status for the firm to help build ventilators, my colleague Jessica Elgot reports.
PMQs - Snap verdict
In the 1990s it was widely assumed that “sleaze” inflicted terminal damage on the reputation of the Conservative government (although, in practice, Black Wednesday and the election of a new, dynamic opposition leader probably did more to shift the dial). One of the big questions now is whether it can do the same today. On the basis of today’s exchanges, it is impossible to come to a firm conclusion either way. Keir Starmer certainly inflicted some damage, but probably not as much as Labour may have been hoping for judging by the party’s comments on the Johnson/Dyson affair this morning (see 9.01am).
The difficulty for Starmer is that, on the specifics of whether Boris Johnson was right to intervene in the way that he did to facilitate a company deploying staff to the UK for an emergency ventilator procurement effort when the first phase of the pandemic was at its height, many or most relatively neutral observers would side with Johnson. That is certainly the view of Tony Blair (see 9.54am), a leader who normally had quite an astute view of how non-politicos see the world, and if you were scoring PMQs on just the first two Starmer questions, Johnson would have won hands down. Perhaps Starmer would have done better to avoid asking about the James Dyson messages specifically, although that would have blunted his case from the off.
But after the first two questions Starmer broadened this out into a more general point about preferential access, and at this point his arguments started to prevail. Echoing a line used by Lucy Powell on the Today programme earlier (see 9.38am), Starmer asked about all those not blessed with PM’s mobile phone number. Would steel workers get more help if they could text Johnson? Or the 3 million self-employed? Or nurses unhappy about their proposed pay rise? All of these points were effective, and Johnson’s responses to them were relatively weak.
Starmer concluded with a catch-all diatribe.
The prime minister is fixing tax breaks for his friends, the chancellor is pushing the Treasury to help Lex Greensill, the health secretary is meeting Greensill for drinks, and David Cameron is texting anybody who will reply.
Every day there are new allegations about this Conservative government: dodgy PPE deals; tax breaks for their mates; the health secretary owns shares in a company delivering NHS services. Sleaze, sleaze, sleaze, and it’s all on his watch.
With this scandal now firmly centred on him, how on earth does he expect people to believe that he is the person to clean this mess up?
This was powerful, reminiscent of some of the Blair attacks on John Major (I remember “chin-deep in sleaze” as one of Blair’s phrases, although Google can’t produce it, and so maybe my memory is playing tricks) and in many ways more significant than the 1990s incarnation of sleaze, which was mostly about sex. But how much do or will voters care? I don’t think anyone knows for sure yet, but anyone assuming that this “sleaze” will derail the Johnson government would be advised to read Tim Shipman’s take on this in the Sunday Times (paywall) at the weekend. This is how it ended.
There is hope for No 10 in the focus groups I sat through. Voters know Johnson is a bit of a rogue and more lax with the facts than most politicians. But many voters feel he does not pretend to be otherwise. As a former minister bluntly put it: “It’s hard to lose trust when no one trusted you to start with.”
What matters to these voters is that Johnson delivers improvements to their lives: new transport projects, better employment opportunities, high streets that function. Far from expecting him to stamp out Tory cronyism or second jobs, they hoped he would cut them in on the deal. They trusted he would get jobs and public money flowing to them, which he has promised with his “levelling up” and “build back better” slogans.
UPDATE: My memory is playing up. Blair’s jibe was not “chin-deep in sleaze”, but “knee-deep in dishonour”. He delivered it in 1996, in response to the publication of the Scott report on arms to Iraq.
Updated
John Spellar (Lab) asks if the PM will instruct government bodies to buy British first.
Johnson says he will do this. This is happening with PPE, he says. He says now 85% of it is produced in the UK. Vaccines are being produced here too, he says.
And that’s it. PMQs is over.
Andrew Mitchell (Con) says Andy Street, the mayor of the West Midlands, has increased transport spending sevenfold. Does the PM have advice for Mitchell’s constituents on 6 May?
Johnson says the Tory mayor is delivering hope for the people of the West Midlands. He says Street deserves another term.
Updated
Karl Turner (Lab) asks the PM to accept that Priti Patel was wrong to say Labour police commissioners do not increase police numbers.
Johnson says he does not want to sound like a stickler for accuracy, but he says in Humberside the police numbers have been increased because of government policies.
Andrew Griffith (Con) asks the PM to praise West Sussex council’s record on recyling.
Johnson says the Conservative-led council there deserves praise. Conservative councils provide better value, he says.
Updated
Johnson says the achievements of the SNP government are “dismal”. They are failing on education, failing on crime and failing on taxation, he says.
Saqib Bhatti (Con) asks if the PM agrees football fans should be at the heart of decision-making.
Johnson agrees. He says the super league plan would have turned clubs into global brands, with no link to the communities from where they originated. The review by Tracey Crouch will consider what can be done to promote the role of fans.
Updated
Andrew Rosindell (Con) asks Johnson to back a plan to move a statute of Ronald Reagan to Parliament Square.
Johnson praises Reagan, but says this is a matter for the mayor of London.
Anna McMorrin (Lab) says we see more corruption come to light day after day. Yet people are excluded from support if they do not have the PM’s number. Will the PM meet her constituents to discuss how they can rebuild their lives?
Johnson says he is proud of what he did to procure ventilators. And he is proud of the vaccine roll-out programme, which he claims Labour opposed. (That’s not true; Labour didn’t oppose the programme.)
Johnson says the roll-out of super-fast broadband has been accelerated.
Kim Johnson (Lab) says hundreds of British Gas engineers have been sacked for not signing new contracts. Fire and rehire practices are unacceptable. Will the government ban this in the Queen’s speech?
Johnson says he repeats what he has said before about this. (He has condemned the practice, but not promised to outlaw it.) He asks Johnson to send details of the case.
Johnson says further measures planned to protect Northern Ireland veterans from prosecution over historical cases
Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, the DUP leader at Westminster, says he was proud to wear uniform and protect Northern Ireland. The PM promised to protect veterans from vexatious prosecutions. Will he honour that?
Johnson thanks Donaldson for his service. And he thanks Johnny Mercer for his work as veterans minister. The overseas operations bill helps veterans. But there is more to be done to help people who served in Northern Ireland (who are not covered by the bill). More measures will be introduced in due course, he says.
Updated
Ian Blackford, the SNP leader at Westminster, says the lobbying revelations are incredibly serious. “This is how the Tories do government.” How many more contracts did the PM personally fix? Will they be published?
Johnson says there is nothing to hide. He says he will share the details with the house, and that he shared the details with his officials immediately.
- Johnson suggests his officials were told about his text message dealings with James Dyson.
Blackford says the 3 million self-employed people did not have a David Cameron or James Dyson to text the PM on their behalf. He says this texts-for-contracts scandal is growing.
In the background we can hear Blackford’s dog barking loudly.
Johnson says the dog was talking more sense than Blackford.
Updated
Philip Davies (Con) says Shipley should be able to break away from Bradford council.
Johnson says a minister will contact Davies about this.
Starmer says if the PM had been talking to nurses, he would know how insulted they are by their pay offer. There is a pattern to this government, he says. Every day there are new allegations - dodgy PPE deal, tax breaks for mates, “sleaze, sleaze, sleaze”, and it’s all on the PM’s watch. How can people expect the PM to clear this up?
Johnson says he gets on with tough decisions to protect the country and to procure ventilators - which Labour now opposes, he says. “Captain Hindsight snipes continually from the sidelines,” he says. The government gets on with the people’s priorities.
Starmer says there is an open door for those with the PM’s number and a closed door for those without. If an NHS nurse had the PM’s phone number, would they get the pay rise they deserve?
Johnson says the government is helping nurses. This is the government that is helping the profession by recruiting more than every before, he says. He says he will back nurses to the hilt.
Starmer says Johnson should do something about steel. Favours for mates are the currency of this government. If one of the 3m self-employed people who need help text the PM asking for help, will they get help too?
Johnson says the government is doing everything it can to help them. He says Starmer should retract what he said about ventilators. Starmer also attacked the vaccine taskforce, he says.
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Starmer says thousands of businesses stepped up. But they did not all have the PM’s phone number.
He says thousands of jobs at Liberty Steel are on the line following the collapse of Greensill Capital. Is it one rule for those with the PM’s phone number and another rule for everyone else?
Johnson goes back to ventilators, and says the programme was a success. Of course he cares about Liberty Steel jobs. He says he believes in British steel. There is now the chance to use procurement to benefit British steel firms.
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Starmer says James Dyson was lobbying for a change to tax rules. How many other people with the PM’s personal number have had preferential treatment?
Johnson says at the time Labour wanted everything done to get ventilators. Labour congratulated the government on what had been done. There were 9,000 ventilators in the country at the time. Some 22,000 were secured. That was the right thing to do. Tony Blair agrees, he says.
Sir Keir Starmer also wishes the Queen a happy birthday, and says he was glad to see justice in the George Floyd case. And he says he is glad the English teams have rejected the European super league plan.
What is the right thing to do if the PM receives a text message from a billionaire supporter asking him to fix tax rules?
Johnson says he makes no apology at all for “shifting heaven and earth” to secure ventilators for the people of this country, and save lives. The public accounts committee said this was a benchmark for procurement, he says.
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Luke Evans (Con) asks if the PM will consider legislation to ensure digitally-altered body images are labelled because of the harm they can do.
Johnson says the government is looking at this as part of its online harms consultation.
Ronnie Cowan (SNP) says councils across the UK have shown a desire to run basic income pilot schemes. Will the PM allow these?
Johnson says he is glad Cowan is backing a UK-wide proposal. The SNP is still “hell-bent on calling an irresponsible referendum on breaking up the United Kingdom”, he says.
Boris Johnson starts by sending wishes to the Queen on her 95th birthday.
He welcomes the verdict in the George Floyd murder trial.
And he says he welcomes the decision of English clubs not to join the European super league.
Time for Covid inquiry 'coming close', says archbishop of Canterbury
Justin Welby, the archbishop of Canterbury, has said the time for a public inquiry into the coronavirus pandemic is “coming close”. In a statement issued by Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice, which is campaigning for an inquiry, Welby said:
I’ve said since very early on that there should be a public inquiry at the right time and again I think that must be coming close now. It should be very independent, very wide ranging. I think a public inquiry has to be very much about lessons to be learned.
Welby also paid tribute to the National Covid Memorial Wall, which has been established by the group on the embankment beside the Thames in London and which he visited yesterday. He said:
It just stretches forever, it’s been completely overwhelming. I was unprepared for the visual force of this wall. It’s just profoundly moving.
There are over 150,000 hearts, each one representing a human life. Everyone grieves differently but one of the things that’s really important in grieving is actions, doing something is very often very, very helpful. So do come down and add to the wall.
Photograph: Toby Melville/Reuters
The DUP’s Ian Paisley has told MPs about a company in Northern Ireland dealing in land rovers that had to complete 1,610 fields of data just to get vehicle parts from Great Britain owing to Brexit checks.
Paisley, a member of the Northern Ireland affairs committee, told colleagues during a hearing that the company found the paperwork so time consuming that they felt the resource devoted to it would wipe out his margin or profit.
Shanker Singham, the customs expert, involved with the government-backed Trader Support Scheme, said TSS initiatives to provide bulk documentation should simplify this but his evidence laid bare the complications now facing those trading between GB and NI.
The committee heard that 38,000 businesses had contacted TSS for help and it had made 58,000 outbound calls to traders.
His evidence came as a new survey by Queen’s university show majority support in Northern Ireland for a new agrifood agreement between the UK and the EU which would do away with many of the physical checks. (See 10.50am.)
Singham told the committee that a veterinary deal would not get rid of need for health certification on food but that a deal mirroring that of New Zealand and Australia would reduce physical checks to 2% and documentary checks to 10% of goods coming from GB.
Dowden insists £2.6m on new Downing Street media suite not wasted despite televised lobby briefings being cancelled
Last night it emerged that No 10 has abandoned its plans for regular televised press briefing and that Allegra Stratton, the former journalist and former Treasury aide hired by Boris Johnson to conduct those on-camera briefings as press secretary, has been given a new post as spokeswoman for Cop26. Over the last year the Downing Street communications operation has resembled a Mexican stand-off. At various points Stratton, Lee Cain, Dominic Cummings, and James Slack have been in the ascendancy, but now they’re all gone or marginalised, leaving Jack Doyle - until recently a political press adviser but now director of communications - last man standing. My colleague Aubrey Allegretti’s overnight story about this is here.
The decision to abandon the briefings has prompted claims that the £2.6m spent by the government turning a room at 9 Downing Street into a media suite where they could take place has been wasted. But in interviews this morning Oliver Dowden, the culture secretary, insisted that the expense was justified because the government needed a “modern press facility”.
He said the government used to use the old state dining room in No 10 for these purposes but that it was not really “fit for purpose”. He went on:
It’s perfectly normal for governments to have better briefing facilities, pretty much every country around the world has them, and that [room] will be used by this government and future governments.
Laura Kuenssberg, the BBC’s political editor, has tweeted more on her Johnson/Dyson lobbying scoop.
I understand No 11 was uneasy about what Dyson was asking for, and it's suggested they had quite deliberately not responded to his firm's requests before Sir James himself then texted Johnson directly about the tax issue
— Laura Kuenssberg (@bbclaurak) April 21, 2021
I'm told Sunak did not and has never had any personal contact with Sir James Dyson
— Laura Kuenssberg (@bbclaurak) April 21, 2021
And of course, Treasury set precedent a few weeks ago when they published Sunak's texts to David Cameron about Greensill - we have asked No 10 if they will do the same with Johnson's texts to Dyson
— Laura Kuenssberg (@bbclaurak) April 21, 2021
One of the big issues with rules about how ministers' are meant to behave is proliferation of politics being done by text and whatsapp - whatever happened in this case, the rules don't really cover the reality of how people communicate now
— Laura Kuenssberg (@bbclaurak) April 21, 2021
Leo Docherty has been appointed as the new veterans minister following last night’s dismissal of Johnny Mercer. Docherty, MP for Aldershot and a former officer in the Scots Guards, was previously a whip.
Here is my colleague Dan Sabbagh’s story on how Mercer was sacked last night, after he let it be known he was planning to resign because he feels the government has failed to honour its promises to veterans, particularly because some are still be prosecuted over historic killings in Northern Ireland.
My colleague Lisa O’Carroll has been tweeting the findings of a new poll showing what people in Northern Ireland think of the Northern Ireland protocol.
Thread: Queen's University also conducted a poll, published today on Northern Ireland protocol.
— lisa o'carroll (@lisaocarroll) April 21, 2021
1. 57% say yes to UK vet regulatory alignment with EU
AND ⬇️
2. Just 5% trust UK govt on NIP
3. 15% trust Stormont exec on NIP
4. 19% trust EU-UK joint comm
5. 62% trust biz leaders
6. 65% say must be some protocol to manage Brexit in NI
— lisa o'carroll (@lisaocarroll) April 21, 2021
7. Is protocol overall good for NI. 43% Y 44% No
8 Is NIP good way to manage Brexit in NI. 42% Y 46% No
9. Only 7% think reliable info on NIP is available
These are from Faisal Islam, the BBC’s economics editor, on the Johnson/Dyson lobbying story.
V interesting story from Laura about ventilator challenge..
— Faisal Islam (@faisalislam) April 21, 2021
At the time, other manufacturers felt that in the key March 16th meeting the PM was especially keen to involve Dyson and JCB, as manufacturer-supporters of Brexit, rather than carmakers and aerospace (who succeeded) https://t.co/Md8DBDTrZm
Moot point perhaps, the ventilators from Dyson weren’t approved nor mass manufactured (though JCB made some prototypes). And as I understand it, the ventilators that were made, didn’t end up being needed so much. But the perception in industry was of a particular No 10 keenness
— Faisal Islam (@faisalislam) April 21, 2021
On the other hand - getting all hands on deck with whatever help needed in the middle of an emerging crisis, where compared to Europe we were desperately lacking in ventilators, might explain the general willingness to shake things up, as Mr Blair alluded to on Today.
— Faisal Islam (@faisalislam) April 21, 2021
Blair says government should publish data on effectiveness of AstraZeneca and Pfizer vaccines at saving lives
Tony Blair was giving interviews this morning because his thinktank, the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, has published a paper urging the government to publish clear information about the number of people who have either gone to hospital or died with Covid in the UK after being vaccinated with the AstraZeneca vaccine or the Pfizer vaccine.
Blair argues that, if the entire world is going to get vaccinated quickly, then countries will have to use the AstraZeneca vaccine, or other viral vector vaccines, like the Johnson and Johnson/Janssen one, because they are cheaper and easier to store. But he says the concerns about the link between these vaccines and extremely rare blood clots has undermined confidence in them.
He says the UK can address this because it is the only country that has used the AstraZeneca and Pfizer vaccine in large quantities, meaning that it is in a position to publish robust data on how these drugs are saving lives. In the report he says:
There is a vaccine surveillance programme that launched in January, apparently updated in March, which is designed to give comprehensive data on what is happening with Covid-19 and the impact of the vaccines. In addition, there are the reports of Public Health England and the Medicines & Healthcare products Regulatory Agency. All these contain useful data, but they presently fall short of what we believe is necessary for that data to be comprehensive and persuasive in light of the now global anxieties expressed about the AstraZeneca vaccine.
I accept completely that the presentation of data has to be carefully curated so that it does not mislead but accurately informs.
However, we are in a situation where, in my judgement, only the release of the total data set for the UK vaccination programme will carry the global credibility AstraZeneca needs.
The report says some information is already available because some doctors and patients are using the “yellow card” scheme (set up to monitor vaccine side-effects) to report cases of people getting Covid after being vaccinated. These figures show that “the AstraZeneca vaccine is far from the poorer cousin of Pfizer”, the report says.
Blair declines to criticise Johnson over Dyson text lobbying, saying PM deserves 'degree of understanding' given context
Labour’s attack on Boris Johnson over the James Dyson text lobbying revelations (see 9.01am and 9.38am) was somewhat undermined by Tony Blair this morning when, in an interview on the Today programme, he conspicuously failed to join in the condemnation.
Asked what he would have done if he had received text messages like this when he was prime minister, Blair said that when he was in Downing Street he never had a mobile phone. He was now “extremely grateful” for that, he said. He went on:
We were in the middle of a pandemic. And after all, we were actually asking James Dyson to step forward and start making ventilators. I find it hard to get worked up about this, and I also don’t know the details ...
I think there’s got to be a certain degree of understanding if you’re in the middle of a huge crisis like this. People are going to be using every means they can to make sure that they respond to the immediate crisis ... I don’t know the detail and I’m reluctant to get into criticising him.
But Blair did say that new rules might be needed to cover text messages (see 9.26am) and to address the balance between formal and informal communications.
In an interview on BBC News with Victoria Derbyshire just a few minutes ago, Blair repeated the same points. Asked if he would give evidence to the public administration and constitutional affairs committee’s inquiry into lobbying, he said he would be happy to consider it.
On the Today programme this morning Lucy Powell, the shadow business minister, said the Johnson/Dyson text messages (see 9.01am) were “jaw-dropping”. She explained:
It stinks, really, that a billionaire businessman can text the prime minister and get an immediate response and apparently an immediate change in policy.
It seems like the country only works for people who are rich enough or influential enough and, frankly, donors to the Tory party, who have the personal mobile number of the prime minister and chancellor.
When it was pointed out that James Dyson was contacting Boris Johnson in a national emergency, she replied:
It’s about fairness of access here. Government needs to work for everyone, not just for the privileged few and those who happen to have the phone number of the prime minister and who happen to sit next to him at some Tory glamour ball.
This is what the ministerial code (pdf) says about ministers holding meetings with non-government bodies to discuss policy.
Ministers meet many people and organisations and consider a wide range of views as part of the formulation of government policy. Meetings on official business should normally be arranged through ministers’ departments. A private secretary or official should be present for all discussions relating to government business. If a minister meets an external organisation or individual and finds themselves discussing official business without an official present – for example at a social occasion or on holiday – any significant content should be passed back to the department as soon as possible after the event. Departments will publish quarterly, details of ministers’ external meetings. Meetings with newspaper and other media proprietors, editors and senior executives will be published on a quarterly basis regardless of the purpose of the meeting.
But the code was not designed for the era of lobbying via text message, which it does not address at all, and as a result it is not at all clear when or if communications of this nature need to be declared to officials.
Labour accuses PM of using his office to give tax breaks to James Dyson
Good morning. Boris Johnson can today mark up the collapse of the European super league plan as a victory. We don’t know quite how big a factor his robust threat to pass legislation to block the plan was in persuading the six English clubs to pull out, but it must have had an impact. However, with that crisis out of the way, he now finds himself embroiled in a lobbying scandal.
The BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg has revealed that Johnson used text messages to assure Sir James Dyson, the billionaire Brexiter, that he would personally intervene to ensure that Dyson’s staff would not face an additional tax bill if they visited the UK from abroad to work on producing ventilators for the NHS during the Covid pandemic. Here is a story explaining the revelations.
And here are the text messages.
The PM - Dyson texts pic.twitter.com/NEXl1VCIK3
— Laura Kuenssberg (@bbclaurak) April 21, 2021
Government responses to the story have stressed that Johnson was acting to facilitate ventilator supply at a time of national emergency. But, as Kuenssberg argues in her analysis, what the revelations show is how the standard Whitehall rules governing ministerial contacts with business people and others who want to change policy don’t cover informal text-message communications. She says:
Dyson had made an official approach to the Treasury on this issue. But it is not clear at this stage whether the prime minister did or didn’t tell officials about these specific exchanges of texts.
The practice of the principles that are meant to govern what is permitted has proved troublesome recently, provoking one of the all too regular concerns about lobbying of government.
Downing Street let it be known last week that the prime minister was shocked about some of the revelations that emerged, particularly about civil servants’ behaviour as the lobbying row got deeper and deeper.
But in the next few hours, some of his critics are likely to claim to be shocked by his.
The Labour party has adopted a much harsher view. In a statement issued this morning, a party spokesperson claimed the revelations showed that Johnson wanted to give “tax breaks” to a “billionaire friend”. The spokesman said:
These are jaw-dropping revelations. Boris Johnson is now front and centre of the biggest lobbying scandal in a generation, and Tory sleaze has reached the heart of Downing Street.
The prime minister appears to have used the power of his office to personally hand public money to a billionaire friend in the form of tax breaks. If true, it is clearer than ever there is one rule for the Conservatives and their friends, another for everyone else.
The stench of sleaze has been building up around this Conservative government for months. Boris Johnson must now agree to a full, transparent and independent inquiry into lobbying - and end the scandal of Conservative politicians abusing taxpayer money.
Here is the agenda for the day.
11am: Alex Salmond launches the Alba party manifesto for the Holyrood election.
12pm: Boris Johnson faces Sir Keir Starmer at PMQs.
After 1pm: MPs debate Lords amendments to the overseas operations bill.
1.30pm: Downing Street is due to hold its daily lobby briefing.
3pm: The Care Quality Commission gives evidence to the joint committee on human rights on Covid regulations and human rights; at 4pm Helen Whately, the care minister, gives evidence.
Covid is the issue dominating UK politics this year and Politics Live is often largely or wholly devoted to coronavirus at the moment. But I will be covering non-Covid politics too and - depending on what seems most important and most interesting to readers - sometimes these stories will take precedence.
For global coronavirus news, do read our global live blog.
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.
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