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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Politics
Andrew Sparrow

Boris Johnson calls coronavirus 'worst public health crisis for a generation' – as it happened

Boris Johnson's press conference - Summary

Here are the main points from the news conference. Boris Johnson was joined by Prof Chris Whitty, the government’s chief medical adviser, and Sir Patrick Vallance, the government’s chief scientific adviser.

  • Johnson said that Britain was facing the “worst public health crisis for a generation” and that “many more” people would die. (See 5.52pm.) In a marked change of tone from his previous press conferences and interviews on this subject, he explained that Britons were going to face considerable disruption to ordinary life over the next few months as the government introduced measures to delay and limit the spread of Covid-19.
  • Johnson said the true number of coronavirus cases in the population was probably “much higher” than official figures suggest. He said:

The number of cases will rise sharply, indeed the true number of cases is higher - perhaps much higher - than the number of cases we have so far confirmed with tests.

Vallance said he thought the actual number of people infected in the UK at the moment could be between 5,000 and 10,000. The official number of confirmed cases is 596.

  • Johnson confirmed that the UK was now moving out of the “contain” phase and into the “delay” phase for dealing with the epidemic. He said:

This is now not just to attempt to contain the disease as far as possible, but to delay its spread and thereby minimise the suffering. If we delay the peak even by a few weeks, then our NHS will be in a stronger state as the weather improves and fewer people suffer from normal respiratory diseases, more beds are available and we’ll have more time for medical research. We can also act to stretch the peak of the disease over a longer period so that our society is better able to cope.

  • Johnson said that people with a fever or a new, persistent cough were now being asked to stay at home for seven days. He also said schools were being advised to cancel overseas trips, and the over-70s and the ill were being told to avoid cruises. He said:

From tomorrow, if you have coronavirus symptoms, however mild -- either a new continuous cough or a high temperature -- then you should stay at home for at least 7 days to protect others and help slow the spread of the disease. We advise all those over 70 and those with serious medical conditions against going on cruises and we advise against international school trips.

  • He said that at some point in the future the government would go further, and ask all family members to stay at home if someone was ill. He said:

At some point in the next few weeks we are likely to go further and if someone in a household has those symptoms then we will be asking everyone in that household will stay at home.

He also said that at some point in the future the elderly would be asked to stay away from places or people to avoid infection. He did not give details.

  • He said at the moment he was not planning to ban sporting events, but he said this was being kept under review. He said:

We are considering the question of banning major public events such as sporting fixtures. And the scientific advice, as we’ve said over the last couple of weeks, is that banning such events will have little effect on the spread but there’s also the issue of the burden that such events can place on public services.

In a mild dig at Nicola Sturgeon, the Scottish first minister who is planning to cancel events with crowds of more than 500 people from next week and whose decision to announce the results of the Cobra meeting before Johnson angered some in No 10, Johnson said that Scotland might have a particular issue with the resilience of its emergency services. He implied that that was why the Scots needed a different policy. Vallance said cancelling sporting events could be counterproductive. He explained:

On average, one person infects two or three others.

You therefore have a very low probability of infecting a large number of people in a stadium and a rather higher probability of infecting people very close to you.

And that means that most of the transmission actually tends to take place with friends and colleagues and those in close environments - and not in the big environments.

Though it is true that any cancellation of things can have some effect, if you then get a displacement activity where you end up with everyone congregating somewhere else, you may actually perversely have an increased risk, particularly in an indoor environment.

So it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t at some point make the decision from a resilience point but this is not a major way to tackle this epidemic.

  • Johnson defended his decision not to introduce measures as draconian as those being introduced in some other other countries. He said:

The measures that I have discussed today... staying at home if you think you have the symptoms, your whole household staying at home, looking after the elderly - making sure the elderly and vulnerable stay at home - these are the three most powerful defensive lines.

We think it’s very important to maintain public trust and confidence in what we are doing, throughout this challenging time, always to be guided by the best possible scientific advice.

He and his advisers also argued that, if self-isolation measures were introduced too early, they would be ineffective - because people would ignore them at the point where they were most necessary.

  • Whitty said he thought the overall mortality rate from Covid-19 was around 1% or less. It was higher for older people, and people in the vulnerable group, and lower for others, he said. But he said he did not want to speculate on who many people might die from the illness because he said the scientists just did not know how many people are infected. He said, although an 80% infection rate was the government’s top reasonable worst case scenario, nowhere in the world was currently coming close to an infection level like that.
  • Vallance said that the outbreak in the UK could be about four weeks behind the outbreak in Italy.
  • Vallance said the peak of the epidemic in the UK was “something like 10 to 14 weeks away”.

That’s all from me for today.

Thanks for the comments.

The Nigel Farage critique of Boris Johnson (see 6.08pm) is still very much a minority view at Westminster. That could change very quickly, of course, and it was noticeable that the questions posed by the media at the press conference this afternoon were a bit more hostile than at the press conference on Monday, or the one he did on Tuesday last week. But the opposition parties have been broadly supportive of the government’s approach, and some YouGov polling last week (pdf) said more people thought Johnson was handling this well (49%) than badly (32%).

Some of the journalists who watched the press conference were reasonable impressed. Here is some reaction.

From Sky’s Adam Boulton

From the Financial Times’ Jim Pickard

From the Guardian’s former political editor Michael White

From the Sun’s Tom Newton Dunn

This is from Nigel Farage. This Brexit party that he leads is, for the moment, politically irrelevant, but he has made a successful career out of stirring up populist grievances against establishment wisdom, and now he seems to be putting himself at the front of the campaign to denounce Boris Johnson as complacent.

Here is a tweet from the health department with a link to a web page giving the government’s new ‘stay at home’ advice in full for anyone with coronavirus symptoms.

Johnson warns UK: 'Many more families are going to lose loved ones before their time'

This is what Boris Johnson said at the start of his press conference. In a marked change of tone from the previous press conferences and interviews he has given on this subject, he said that this was the worst public health crisis for a generation and that “many more” people would die. He said:

It’s clear that coronavirus Covid-19 continues and will continue to spread across the world and our country over the next few months.

We’ve done what can be done to contain this disease, and this has bought us valuable time, but it’s now a global pandemic.

The number of cases will rise sharply, indeed the true number of cases is higher - perhaps much higher - than the number of cases we have so far confirmed with tests.

We’ve all got to be clear, this is the worst public health crisis for a generation.

Some people compare it to seasonal flu, alas that is not right.

Due to the lack of immunity this disease is more dangerous.

It is going to spread further and I must level with you, I must level with the British public: many more families are going to lose loved ones before their time.

Full summary coming soon.

Boris Johnson at his press conference.
Boris Johnson at his press conference. Photograph: Simon Dawson/AFP via Getty Images

Johnson is winding up now.

He ends by repeating the point about how if anyone has a high temperature, or a new and continuous cough, they should stay at home.

That is the way to “squash the sombrero”, he says, referring to the graph illustrating the peak (see below).

And that’s it. I will post a summary and reaction shortly.

Sir Patrick Vallance with a graph showing the shape of an epidemic
Sir Patrick Vallance with a graph showing the shape of an epidemic Photograph: Sky News

Q: How confident are we in the data?

Johnson says some countries are having some success in greatly reducing the incidence of the disease.

He says there are measures that could be taken of a draconian nature. But that might just lead to the disease surging back, he says.

Whitty says there are some things we are very confident of, like the mortality rate.

But we don’t know how many people get the disease without symptoms.

He says, depending on what the answer to that is, the disease has very different outcomes.

Q: When do you think older people will be asked to stay at home? And how old is old?

Vallance says the peak is probably 10 to 14 weeks away, maybe longer. Even to cover the peak, you would need to ensure that those sorts of measures would be in place for 12 or 13 weeks or so.

Whitty say people may get individual advice from their GP. But national guidance will also be issued at the appropriate time, he says.

Q: What do you mean by people volunteering?

Johnson says he hopes people will think of their neighbours, and consider what they can do to help them. The advice is not to go within two metres of them.

Vallance says the behavioural science says, at times like this, you see an outbreak of altruism.

Q: You said we were four week behind Italy. Might we have to introduce Italian-style measures?

Vallance says the UK may be four weeks behind in terms of the scale of the outbreak. You would expect it to follow a similar trajectory in terms of numbers.. What they are proposing today are measures to deflect that, he says.

Q: Are you planning any register to help people volunteer?

Johnson says Matt Hancock is setting up a system for people who want to come back to the NHS to offer their services.

Q: Some workers will not be covered by our statutory sick pay issue. Could you extend SSP?

Johnson says the government is changing benefits rules. It will do everything necessary to ensure people are not penalised for doing the right thing.

Q: Are you worried about getting it yourself? You have to meet a lot of people in your job. And who would step in if you were incapacitated?

Johnson just says he is washing his hands.

Johnson asks Vallance to address the point about whether stopping flights is effective.

Vallance says, when they looked at this in reduction to China, they thought at best stopping flights would delay the disease by a day or two.

And he says screening at airports sound sensible. But in the US the first case went through screening.

On sports events, he says a single individual on average infects two or three others.

That means there is a very low probability of infecting a large number of people in a studium.

Most infection takes places when people are with friends, not when they are in large groups.

That means, perversely, banning large events could be counter-productive.

He says the way to fight this is to reduce infection across households and across people who are affected.

Q: Can you understand why people watching this will think you are doing little, when they look at the kind of things happening in Ireland?

Johnson says he is guided by the best scientific advice.

Q: The German chancellor said 70% of people could get this. Do you agree? And how many people might die?

Vallance says getting people to stay at home will give you a 20 to 25% reduction in the peak.

And he says isolating the elderly can reduce the death rate by about 30%, he says.

He says it is important not to go to things that sound sensible, but have little effect.

And you don’t want to introduce measures that only apply for a week or two, he says. To be effective, these measure will have to last longer.

Whitty says closing schools has big knock-on effects for the whole of society.

On numbers, Whitty says he has been absolute level with the public on numbers on which he has confidence.

He says his top planning assumption is 80% of people getting the illness.

He says he and Vallance agree on a mortality rate of 1% - which would be higher for vulnerable groups, and lower for other groups.

But he says what he does not want to do is give a figure for how many people have been affected. He says he does not want to do that because he does not know the numbers.

Whitty says asking people to stay at home with minor symptoms sounds easy.

But in practice it will be harder for people than they think.

Johnson is now taking questions.

Q: How sure are you that your approach is right?

Johnson says he is guided by science in everything he does.

He returns to the point about elderly people. He says you need to time the period of isolation for them at the point where they are most at risk.

He says in Scotland there is a particular issue with the resilience of public services. In the UK this issue will have to be kept under review too, he says.

He says the UK government is not saying no to the sort of measure announced by Nicola Sturgeon. (See 12.57pm.)

Whitty says the government is also looking at mitigation measures.

First, that involves reducing the peak.

And, second, that involves increasing the capacity of the NHS.

Whitty says, at the next stage, the government will want to introduce social distancing measures for people who are vulnerable or who have underlying conditions.

But it is too early to recommend that, he says.

He says this would lead to other problems, like loneliness.

But at some point it will be necessary to do this, he says.

And Whitty says there will now no longer by any geographical limits to testing.

Whitty says there are other changes too.

The government no longer needs to identify every case, he says. People staying at home will not need testing. Testing will focus on people in hospitals with symptoms.

Whitty says it is important that people with mild symptoms do not call 111.

But if their conditions deteriorate, they should seek medical help.

Prof Chris Whitty, the government’s chief medical adviser, is speaking now.

He says the contain phase is over, and the government is moving on to the delay phase.

All four chief medical officers have agreed to raise the risk level to high.

He says it is important not to ask people too early to respond. There is a danger of fatigue.

Washing hands is very important, he says.

He says, from today, the government is asking people who have a persistent cough which is new, or a temperature, to stay at home for seven days.

It is important to explain why, he says.

First, he says this reduces the risk to older people and people with underlying conditions.

Second, he says this can reduce the peak.

And, third, this can delay the peak, he says.

He says they have chosen seven days because the illness is most infectious at the beginning.

He says the evidence suggests that people with mild symptoms can spread the disease to a lot of people.

Vallance says the timing is critical: if you tell people to stay at home too early, they get fed up with this at the point where you need them to stay at home.

On closing schools, he says for this to be effective, closures would have to last from 13 to 16 weeks. He says children would, in practice, keep mixing with each other during that period. And they might get sent to stay with grandparents, which could increase the risk, he says.

Sir Patrick Vallance, the government’s chief scientific adviser, is speaking now.

This is a new disease, he says. He says no one has immunity to it.

He says it looks as if the UK is on a trajectory about four weeks behind Italy.

He shows a slide showing a peak. This shows the pattern of an infection, he says.

He says it starts with very low numbers. He says the number of infections at the moment is likely to be between 5,000 and 10,000.

Then the number of infections rise steeply, he says.

He says the government wants to do two things: to delay the peak, and to push the peak down.

He says delaying the peak pushes it into the summer, when respiratory diseases are less common.

He says it is not possible to stop everyone getting it. And it is not desirable either, he says. He says you want people to pick up immunity.

He says the disease seems to come in two phases: an early, mildish phase, and then a second phase, where the elderly and people with underlying conditions are vulnerable.

Johnson says he wants to address older people in particular. For most people this is a mild illness, but he knows they are vulnerable.

He says he wants to tell them that the government will do all it can “to help you and your family”.

The government is not just helping the economy, he says. He says he wants to stress that it is helping families.

He says he wants to end with two familiar messages.

First, it is vital to wash your hands.

And, second, the country will get through this, just as it has got through other situations like this.

Johnson says this will cause disruption across the country for many months.

He says he wants to urge people not to call 111, but to use the internet to get information if they can.

Johnson says he is not closing schools now.

He says the advice is that his could do more harm than good.

But the situation may change, he says.

Johnson says the government is considering banning large events.

He says that won’t necessarily reduce the spread. But that would ease the pressure on the emergency services, he says.

Johnson says tomorrow, if you have coronavirus symptoms, you should stay home for at least seven days.

He says people over 70 with underlying medical conditions are being advised to avoid going on cruises.

And he says schools are being advised to cancel overseas trips.

Boris Johnson says 'many more' people will die from coronavirus

Boris Johnson is starting his press conference.

He says he has just chaired a Cobra meeting. They have done what they can to contain coronavirus, he says.

The true number of cases is higher, “perhaps much higher”, than the figures suggest, he says.

He says this is the worst public health crisis for a general. It is much more serious than flu, he says. He goes on:

More families, many more families, are going to lose loved ones before their time.

The Telegraph’s science editor Sarah Knapton has a read-out from the measures being announced by the government.

Boris Johnson's press conference

Boris Johnson is about to hold a press conference to announce the decisions taken by the Corbra emergency committee this afternoon. He will appear alongside Prof Chris Whitty, the government’s chief medical adviser, and Sir Patrick Vallance, the government’s chief scientific adviser.

Electoral Commission calls for local elections to be postponed

The Electoral Commission is saying that this year’s local elections should be postponed.

The final decision is up to the government, but it would be embarrassing for ministers to ignore the commission’s advice on this issue.

Labour scales back size of event planned for announcement of new leader because of coronavirus

Jeremy Corbyn’s successor as Labour leader will now be announced at a scaled-back event as the party postpones and alters meetings due to the coronavirus outbreak, the Press Association reports. The PA story goes on:

Labour said that the final leadership hustings of the race was being cancelled, while the party’s Welsh conference and Scottish women’s conference were being postponed.

The party said the “wellbeing of our members and staff” and contributing to the “collective effort to protect public health” were behind the decision.

The winner of the race between Sir Keir Starmer, Rebecca Long-Bailey and Lisa Nandy will still be announced on 4 April as planned, but it will no longer be at a “special conference”.

Labour’s decision was announced shortly after the UK moved on to the next stage of its response to Covid-19, with potential restrictions being imposed to delay the spread of the disease.

A Labour spokeswoman said: “In light of the spread of coronavirus, Labour has cancelled the leadership elections special conference scheduled for 4 April.

“The results of the leadership and deputy leadership elections will be announced at a scaled-back event on the same date and we are now considering options for what form that event will take.

“This is not a decision we have taken lightly. Our priority is the wellbeing of our members and staff, and ensuring we fully contribute to the collective effort to protect public health.”

The final hustings was due to take place in Tottenham, north London, on Saturday and focus on black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) issues.

Party officials were also considering whether constituency meetings should go ahead.

Updated

Nicola Sturgeon’s decision to announce the outcome of today’s Cobra meeting before Boris Johnson (see 3.33pm) has gone down badly with London, BuzzFeed’s Alex Wickham reports.

Earlier I quoted the Institute for Fiscal Studies saying yesterday’s budget was less generous on current spending than it appeared. (See 1.56pm.) These two charts from the detailed presentation on public services (pdf) explain why in more detail.

This chart shows how, in real terms, day-to-day spending on public services will be higher in 2024-25 than it was in 2009-10, at the end of the last Labour government. But there’s a catch, or rather two. First, if you look at day-to-day spending on public services per head, it is no higher than it was in 2009-10 (because the population has got bigger). And, second, if you take out health, which received a sizeable, long-term spending increase under Theresa May, real-terms spending on everything else is lower than at the end of the Labour government, both overall (7% lower) and per person (14% lower).

Real-terms public spending figures.
Real-terms public spending figures. Photograph: IFS

But the IFS also says these figures are potentially misleading, for two reasons. First, they include the £11bn a year that the UK will save because it won’t have to make annual payments to the EU - but they do not take into account the £7-8bn a year that the EU used to spend in the UK. And, second, they include an extra £5.5bn a year that the government is spending because of changes to the rules on employer pension contributions. The IFS argues that taking out these figures allows for a more reliable comparison with the past, and on that basis it has produced a chart with adjusted figures (see below).

On this measure, day-to-day public spending in real terms will still be higher in 2024-25 than in 2009-10, but only 5% higher, not 9% higher. But day-to-day spending per person ends up being 4% lower in 2024-25 in real terms than in 2009-10, overall spending excluding health is 12% lower, and spending per person excluding health is 19% lower.

Real-terms public spending figures - adjusted
Real-terms public spending figures - adjusted Photograph: IFS

Sturgeon is now taking questions.

Q: What sort of gatherings do you want to cancel?

Ones that put pressure on emergency services, she says. So that would not mean church events. But it would mean sports events.

She says, as the weeks go on, the emergency services are going to come under growing pressure. That is why she wants to ease the pressure on them.

She says she will publish further details in due course.

Updated

Sturgeon says the government’s focus is on seeking to delay the spread of Covid-19.

People with a fever or a persistent cough should stay at home for seven days, says Sturgeon

Sturgeon says moving from “contain” to “delay” means that anyone with coronavirus-type symptoms will be advised to stay at home for seven days.

That means people who have a fever, or a persistent cough, she says.

She says those people do not have to see a doctor, unless their condition gets worse.

She says the UK government is not advising schools to close at the moment. But it is advising schools to cancel overseas trips.

And she says it is important for people to understand that, if schools were to close, it would not just be for a week or two. It would be until the disease had passed its peak, which would mean until the summer, she says.

She also restates her position on mass gatherings. She says this is just a Scottish government position, not a UK government position. She repeats the point she made to the Scottish parliament earlier (see 12.57pm), when she said she wanted to cancel mass gatherings primarily to ease the pressures on the emergency services.

Updated

UK has now moved from "contain" phase to "delay' phase in coronavirus outbreak, says Sturgeon

Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, is holding a press briefing now. She says she will be talking about the outcome of the Cobra emergency committee, which has just concluded. She participated in the meeting, although only remotely; she has not been in London.

She is jumping the gun on Boris Johnson, who is due to hold a press briefing later.

These are from the Telegraph’s Gordon Rayner.

The Scottish Green party has cancelled its spring conference, which was due to take place on Saturday 28 March, because of the coronavirus outbreak after the number of cases declared in Scotland jumped to 60 on Thursday.

Ross Greer MSP, a co-chair of the party’s executive, said:

Due to the ongoing coronavirus situation the Scottish Greens executive committee has today taken the decision to cancel our upcoming conference. The health and wellbeing of our members and the public is our primary concern and it is with that in mind that we have taken this decision.

The conference was due to be held at the Adam Smith theatre in Kirkcaldy, the birth place of the legendary 18th century economist.

Updated

Johnny Mercer, the veterans minister, promised to unveil a bill on Wednesday next week to introduce a statutory presumption against prosecution for veterans in the Commons, as he made a statement about mental health in the armed forces in the morning.

The minister said he was meeting a pledges to legislate in this area, but would not say how or whether the measures would apply to Northern Ireland, where many violent incidents from the time of the Troubles are only now beginning to be investigated by legal authorities.

“The days of lawyers running amok in our services and in our veterans community, trying to rewrite history, in order to make money, are over,” Mercer added.

The party’s election manifesto promised to “introduce new legislation to tackle the vexatious legal claims that undermine our armed forces”.

In the last parliament Penny Mordaunt, the then defence secretary, proposed a statutory presumption against prosecutions against veterans for incidents taking place 10 or more years ago, covering Iraq, Afghanistan and any other armed conflict overseas - but left open the question of Northern Ireland, prompting pressure from Conservative backbenchers for it to be included.

Mercer was challenged by newly elected Alliance party MP Stephen Farry, who voiced concern about the impending legislation. He said:

I do challenge this narrative of excessive claims being made against veterans, particularly in relation to Northern Ireland. It undermines the criminal justice system in Northern Ireland, which has the ability to weed out such claims.

Farry warned that some veterans could get “unnecessary protection, warping the rule of law” in relation to historic claims as a result.

In reply Mercer said that when to comes to Northern Ireland “I tread down this path with utmost care”.

The Scottish government is to get an £350m as its share of the extra money that Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, released in yesterday’s budget to boost public spending to cope with the coronavirus crisis.

A UK government source said Wales would receive £220m extra and Northern Ireland £120m.

The money has not been ringfenced, allowing all three devolved administrations to spend it as they see fit, but they will face significant political and public pressure to focus on tackling the pandemic’s impacts on the NHS, public services and businesses.

The Scottish health secretary, Jeane Freeman, was challenged on BBC Radio Scotland about the availability of protective equipment such as face masks when doctors across Scotland texted the BBC to say they had not been issued with any or had run out.

Nicola Sturgeon, the first minister, told Holyrood today that the NHS would be put under great strain. “Our emergency services are likely to suffer from higher than normal sickness absence rates in the weeks and months ahead and our NHS in particular will be under significant pressure,” she said.

Kate Forbes, Scotland’s finance secretary, said yesterday her government had not yet been told how much extra money it would get but was pleased the Treasury was increasing funding.

Budget plans for current spending 'nothing like as generous as they appear', says IFS

The Institute for Fiscal Studies is holding its traditional day-after briefing on the budget. It started with an overview from Paul Johnson, its director, and the full text is now available on the IFS website.

  • Johnson said the economy was not in a robust state for dealing with a shock like coronavirus. And failure to negotiate a trade deal with the EU this year could make that worse, he said. He explained:

The OBR’s economic forecasts are a little more positive than the Bank’s, but they are still very weak even before factoring in possible longer term effects from the coronavirus. Projected growth rates averaging barely over one and a half per cent a year for the next five years are feeble and indicative of an economy that is not in a robust position for coping with shocks like the coronavirus. The OBR continues to assume an orderly move to a free trade agreement with the EU. Anything less orderly, or a failure to achieve such an agreement, would weaken an already weak economy even further.

  • He said that if coronavirus had a long-term impact on the economy, Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, would have to revise his strategy. Johnson said:

Only time will tell whether any of the numbers in this budget will have meaning once the economic effects of coronavirus become fully evident ...

If the long-term path of the economy is affected then [Sunak] will also need to reassess much more of his fiscal strategy when he returns to the despatch box in the autumn.

  • He said the plans for current spending were “nothing like as generous as they appear”. He explained:

Average annual increases of 2.8% sound substantial. Take account of the need to replace EU funding, and factor in planned increases for health, schools, defence and overseas aid, and there is relatively little here for other departments. If this spending envelope is stuck to there are plenty of public services which will not be enjoying much in the way of spending increases over the next few years.

  • He said overall spending is due to rise by 9% in real terms between 2019-20 and 2023-24, “largely paid for by extra borrowing”. He said public spending would stabilise at around 41% of national income, “above its pre-crisis level and bigger than at any point between the mid 1980s and the start of the financial crisis”.
  • But he said current spending per head for most public services would remain well below 2010-11 levels in 2024-25. He went on:

While austerity is clearly at an end in the sense that spending is rising, spending levels in many areas are set to remain well below 2010 levels for a long time to come. Expectations may be disappointed.

  • He said although public spending was rising, it was not rising by as much as Labour proposed in its 2019 manifesto.
  • He said he thought the £12bn package of measures to help the country tackle coronavirus was “fairly well designed”.
Paul Johnson.
Paul Johnson. Photograph: Sky News

Here are two of the most striking charts from the Resolution Foundation’s report (pdf) on yesterday’s budget.

  • The UK’s medium-term outlook for growth is “dismal”, the foundation says. It explains:

The [Office for Budget Responsibility’s] medium-term outlook is dismal. [The chart below] shows cumulative real GDP growth over the five-year forecast period for each fiscal event since the OBR’s inception. As it makes plain, the OBR’s outlook in March 2020 is the second-weakest in its history, pipped only by its March 2018 prognosis. If yesterday’s forecast holds true, we estimate that the economy will have underperformed by almost one-quarter relative to the average five-year growth rate of the preceding decade. And the growth rates for the fourth and fifth years of the forecast are both the weakest on record.

Five-year growth rates
Five-year growth rates. Photograph: Resolution Foundation
  • The overall impact of tax and benefit changes since 2015 has been highly regressive, the foundation says. It explains:

[The chart below] shows the overall impact of benefit and tax policy choices on households across the income distribution since summer budget 2015. Given that welfare support is targeted at lower-income households, and that the 2015 package of welfare cuts was so substantial (including the benefits freeze and two-child limit), the average losses for poorer households are very large. For example, the second decile will ultimately be £2,900 a year worse off (on average) than if welfare policy had remained unchanged, with £900 of that still to come as a result of welfare policies still being rolled out.

Welfare cuts have been somewhat offset (in aggregate) by tax cuts. Successive cuts to income tax, through increases in the personal allowance and higher-rate threshold, have been followed in this budget by an increase in the starting point for national insurance, as well as repeated fuel duty freezes. But these changes have been of most benefit – in cash terms – to the top half of the income distribution, though this has been tempered at the very top by tax increases targeted at the richest tenth of the population.

Distributional impact analysis of tax and benefit changes since 2015.
Distributional impact analysis of tax and benefit changes since 2015. Photograph: Resolution Foundation

Updated

President Trump did not contact Boris Johnson directly before his decision to ban citizens from 26 EU countries from entering the US for the next 30 days, No 10 has said. Britain and Ireland are exempt from the ruling because they are not in the Schengen border-free travel agreement.

No 10 said today the government had no plans for the UK to follow the US and ban travel from EU countries. The prime minister’s spokesman said:

We have been following the advice of the chief medical officer and chief scientific adviser in relation to all parts of our response to this virus and the advice we’ve been given is that is not a step they recommend in the UK.

Asked about concerns that other countries were taking a different approach to the virus, such as Ireland and Denmark, where they have already moved to school closures, the spokesman said: “We believe that we are taking our decisions based on the best scientific and medical advice that is available.”

Updated

Sturgeon says she is minded to cancel events involving crowds of more than 500 in Scotland

This is what Nicola Sturgeon told MSPs in the Scottish parliament about her plan to cancel mass gatherings in Scotland. She said that she would be participating in the Cobra meeting chaired by the prime minister this afternoon to discuss coronavirus, and she said she expected the UK to move from the “contain” phase of the strategy to the “delay” phase. She went on:

In addition, the health secretary [Jeane Freeman] and I have been considering what further actions we require to take, particularly to protect the resilience of our frontline emergency workers, and that does involve our position on mass gatherings ...

The scientific advice is telling us that cancelling mass gatherings will not, in itself, have a significant impact on reducing the spread of the virus. Of course that does not mean it will have no impact on that.

But the view that the health secretary and I have come to is that there are wider issues to take account of here. Mass gatherings require to be policed. They require to have emergency ambulance cover. They require the services of our voluntary health services. And at a time when we need to be reducing the pressures on these frontline workers in order to free them up to focus on the significant challenge that lies ahead, I do think it is inappropriate that we continue as normal.

So the health secretary and I this morning have decided that we are minded – and this is something that we will seek views on from others at Cobra – now that we will advise the cancellation, from the start of next week, of mass gatherings of 500 people or more. And that is principally to protect the resilience of our frontline workers.

Updated

The Conservative MP Andrew Bridgen is in self-isolation, having had lunch with the health minister Nadine Dorries who has tested positive for coronavirus, the Sun’s Kate Ferguson reports.

Updated

Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, has told the Scottish parliament that she is minded to recommend the cancellation of events involving crowds or more than 500 people from next week, the BBC’s Glenn Campbell reports.

Sturgeon set out part of her reasoning on this in an interview this morning. (See 11.01am.)

Nicola Sturgeon at first minister’s question in Holyrood
Nicola Sturgeon at first minister’s question in Holyrood Photograph: BBC

Updated

Yesterday the Liberal Democrats announced that they were cancelling their spring conference in York this weekend because of coronavirus. Now Plaid Cymru has announced that it has cancelled its spring conference in Llangollen next weekend for the same reason. Plaid said it thought this was “the most responsible course of action for the party to take in the current circumstances”.

At the No 10 lobby briefing this morning Downing Street insisted that Ireland’s decision to close schools, colleges and childcare facilities because of coronavirus would not lead to Northern Ireland being treated differently from the rest of the UK. The prime minister’s spokesman said:

We have been in regular dialogue with Irish counterparts. In terms of our own response, we have said that we want it to be a UK-wide response and we have been working with the four chief medical officers and devolved administrations.

Asked about the difference in the approach in Dublin, the spokesman added: “We follow our own advice, they will do the same.”

Will Tanner, head of the centre-right thinktank Onward, has welcomed the planning measures announced by Robert Jenrick in the Commons. His tweet includes a link to the 11-page government document (pdf) summarising the measures. There is also a press release here.

Jenrick announces changes to planning laws to encourage more house building

Robert Jenrick, the housing secretary, has just delivered a statement to MPs about planning. It is normal for a budget to be followed by ministerial announcements in the following days fleshing out some of the proposals announced by the chancellor, and yesterday Rishi Sunak said that Jenrick would be setting out “comprehensive reforms to bring the planning system into the 21st century”. Sunak may have jumped the gun, because although Jenrick said there would be a planning white paper, he told the Commons that it would not be published until the spring.

Despite not being ready to publish a full package of measures, Jenrick was able to outline a series of proposals that are in the pipeline. He said that his priority was ensuring more homes get built, so that it was easier for young people to acquire a home. In particular, he announced:

  • A drive to encourage building on brownfield sites. Some £400m is being spent regenerating brownfield sites, and a map of development opportunities on brownfield sites will be produced.
  • A move to “dramatically accelerate” the planning system. This will involve making it more digital, with planning fees linked to performance.
  • Developers will get new rights to demolish shops or industrial units to build homes.
  • More information will be published about who owns options for land development.
  • The formula used by councils to assess local housing need will be revised, with a view to ensuring that more homes are built, particularly in urban areas.
  • Councils will be told that all local plans must be completed by December 2023
  • Two bills will be introduced: a building safety bill, and a renters reform bill.
  • The national planning policy framework will be revised, to embed the principle of good design in it.
  • Planning rules for areas at high risk of flooding will be reviewed.
Robert Jenrick
Robert Jenrick Photograph: HoC

Voting in division lobbies does not pose coronavirus risk to MPs, says Rees-Mogg

Jacob Rees-Mogg, the leader of the Commons, has told MPs that they are not at high risk of catching coronavirus when they congregate in the division lobbies to vote. He was speaking during business questions, and responding to a question from the SNP MP Tommy Sheppard who said that it might be safer for MPs during the coronavirus outbreak to abandon their normal method of voting (queuing up in a smallish lobby while waiting to have their names ticketed off by a clerk) and to instead use the deferred division procedure (voting using a ballot paper). Rees-Mogg replied that he had taken a Public Health England official into a division lobby and been told that the lobbies were “not a high risk”. But the expert did suggest opening windows, Rees-Mogg said.

Rees-Mogg also indicated that emergency legislation to give the government new powers to deal with the outbreak would be introduced in the week beginning Monday 23 March.

Jacob Rees-Mogg.
Jacob Rees-Mogg. Photograph: HoC

Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, has said that there is a “big question mark” about whether large public events like football matches should continue to go ahead during the coronavirus outbreak. In an interview with ITV’s Good Morning Britain she said that, even if events like these did not significantly contribute to the spread, they distracted the emergency services. She explained:

Mass gatherings, football matches for example, they need to be policed, they need to have emergency medical ambulance cover.

We are going into a period where our emergency services, our NHS in particular, will be under significant challenge and significant pressure, we may see all of our workforces affected by high absentee rates because of sickness, so there’s a wider issue here about whether cancelling those kind of events is the right thing to do to reduce pressure on our front-line emergency workers.

From a wider resilience point of view, then I think there is a big question mark over whether large-scale events like that, whether it is sensible to allow them to proceed at the moment.

We’re looking very carefully right now at whether large-scale events, whether it would be right and sensible given the situation we are facing right now to allow them to go ahead.

The UK government may announce a move towards new “social distancing measures” after a Cobra emergency committee meeting on coronavirus being chaired by Boris Johnson this afternoon. Sturgeon said she thought it was time to move from the “contain” phase of the strategy to the “delay” phase.

Nicola Sturgeon.
Nicola Sturgeon. Photograph: Gordon Terris/The Herald/PA

No 10 set to announce feasibility study into bridge linking Scotland to Northern Ireland, says minister

Alister Jack, the Scottish secretary, told BBC Radio Scotland this morning that Boris Johnson would soon announce a feasibility study into plans for a bridge linking Scotland to Northern Ireland. In an interview this morning, asked why there was no money for the plan in the budget, he replied: “Watch this space.” He went on:

The prime minister I expect will announce a feasibility study into the link to Northern Ireland. I hope the Scottish government will back it.

Johnson has a fondness for extravagant infrastructure schemes and he has repeatedly expressed interest in a bridge linking Scotland and Northern Ireland, despite experts dismissing the idea as impractical. Jack has suggested that the scheme could involve a combination of tunnel and bridge.

Updated

The Resolution Foundation thinktank has this morning published a 60-page analysis of the budget (pdf). And it has been posting some highlights on a Twitter thread starting here.

I will post more from the report shortly.

Rishi Sunak's morning interviews – summary

Here are the main points from Rishi Sunak’s morning interview round.

  • Sunak, the chancellor, criticised President Trump’s flight ban announcement, saying that the UK government’s view was that measures like this would not have much impact on the spread of coronavirus. (See 8.55am.)
  • He accepted that the flight ban would have an impact on the UK economy. Asked on the Today programme whether it would have a negative impact on the economy, he accepted that it would, although in his answer he focused on making a general point about the negative economic impact of coronavirus. He said:

The US is still deciding the details of what exactly that means, but you are right. As I talked about yesterday, there will be an impact on the demand side of our economy as people are unable to spend in the way they normally would and travel, but it also affects the supply chains for businesses and that impacts the supply side of our economy.

As those supply chains are disrupted, the productive capacity of our economy will shrink for a period of time.

  • He dismissed claims that his spending plans were irresponsible. He said:

I make absolutely no apology for responding in the short term in scale to the immediate threat that we face from coronavirus.

I think that’s the right thing to do for the economy. We need to help businesses have a bridge to get to the other side.

In the medium term, as you will see from the figures, there is actually responsible economic management and it’s because we’ve had responsible economic management for several years that I’m able to stand here in a strong position to say that we will do whatever it takes to get through this.

  • He said that his measures were compatible with the fiscal rules set out in the Conservative manifesto.
  • He laughed off suggestions that he had delivered a Gordon Brown budget, or a Labour budget. When LBC’s Nick Ferrari put this to him, Sunak laughed, and said he would let others make that judgment.
  • He suggested that Jeremy Corbyn’s resignation as Labour leader was holding up the announcement of plans for reform of social care. When asked about the absence of social care from the budget, he said that Matt Hancock, the health secretary, wrote to MPs last week proposing cross-party talks starting in May. When it was put to him that the government was taking a long time, particularly since Boris Johnson claimed to have a plan for social care last summer, Sunak replied:

There is no permanent leader of the opposition at the moment. They’re having a leadership contest, so we can’ formally start that process until they have one.

  • Sunak defended his decision not to extend sick pay to cover the low-paid and the self-employed. In the budget he said that people in these categories would instead find it easier to claim benefits as a result of rules being relaxed during the coronavirus outbreak. This morning he said:

For those that don’t [have access to statutory sick pay] we’ve strengthened the working of our welfare system so that it works quicker, more responsibly and more generously for those people.

He also claimed that around half of workers who needed to take time off would get more than statutory sick pay because their employers offered more generous arrangements.

  • He sidestepped a question about whether he and his family would be able to live on £90 a week. Statutory sick pay is worth £94.25 per week. Asked whether that was enough to live on, he replied:

We have strengthened our safety net to make sure we have access to benefits easier, quicker, more generously, and also provided an extra £500m to local authorities to distribute to vulnerable people and their local communities if they need extra support.

When pressed on whether he could live on this himself, he said:

This is a safety net. That is what it’s there for, to provide people to fall back on. It’s obviously not the same as your day-to-day life

Because what we’ve done on business rates is target the sectors of the economy which are in the consumption side of the economy, which will see a very significant hit because of people’s inability to spend. And what we wanted to do is make sure that they don’t go out of business during that period of time.

  • He accepted that his plans involved making an assumption about the cost of borrowing remaining low, but it was a judgment he defended. He said:

You have to make a judgment about the persistence of low interest rates, that’s a judgment I have to make as chancellor.

The reality is these interest rates have stayed lower for longer than anyone expected and keep falling, and it’s right that I as someone in charge of managing our public finances has a view on that.

Rishi Sunak visiting a building project at Leeds station this morning.
Rishi Sunak visiting a building project at Leeds station this morning. Photograph: Danny Lawson/PA

Updated

Stock markets around the wall are down following President Trump’s travel ban announcement. My colleague Graeme Wearden has all the details on his business live blog.

Updated

This is from the BBC’s Adam Fleming. He is quoting from the government’s UK influenza pandemic preparedness strategy. It was drawn up in 2011, but officials have been using it as the starting point for their response to the coronavirus outbreak.

There will be two statements in the Commons today.

Trump's travel ban won't have much impact on spread of coronavirus, says Rishi Sunak

Good morning. Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, has been doing the tradition post-budget morning interview round and, in a sign perhaps of the seriousness of the crisis facing the economy, No 10 has lifted its usual ban and let him speak to the Today programme.

The first topic to come up, of course, was President Trump’s shock decision last night to announce a 30-day ban on people from most EU countries (but not the UK) from travelling to the US.

Criticising American presidents in public does not come easily to UK government ministers, particularly Conservative ones working for Boris Johnson, but Sunak could not avoid saying he thought Trump’s plan was a bad idea. He told the Today programme:

With regard to flight bans, we are always guided by the science as we make our decisions here. The advice we are getting is that there isn’t evidence that interventions like closing borders or travel bans are going to have a material effect on the spread of the infection. That is why we have taken the decisions we have.

In another BBC interview he was more direct. “We haven’t believed that that’s the right thing to do, the evidence here doesn’t support that,” he said.

I will post more from his interviews shortly.

Here is the agenda for the day.

10am: Lord Hall, the BBC director general, and Sir David Clementi, its chairman, give evidence to the Commons culture committee.

1pm: The Institute for Fiscal Studies holds a briefing on the budget.

1.15pm: Boris Johnson chairs a meeting of Cobra, the government’s emergency committee, to discuss coronavirus.

We’re also due to get an announcement from Robert Jenrick, the housing secretary, on plans to reform planning laws.

I will be covering Westminster coronavirus developments, but our main coronavirus coverage is on a separate coronavirus outbreak live blog. As usual, I will be covering breaking political news as it happens, as well as bringing you the best reaction, comment and analysis from the web. I plan to post a summary when I wrap up.

You can read all the latest Guardian politics articles here. Here is the Politico Europe roundup of this morning’s political news. And here is the PoliticsHome list of today’s top 10 must-reads.

If you want to follow me or contact me on Twitter, I’m on @AndrewSparrow.

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.

Updated

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