Afternoon summary
- Boris Johnson has been criticised by the care home sector for suggesting they were partly to blame for the spread of coronavirus among their residents. (See 5.05pm.)
- The Department of Health and Social Care has released figures suggesting that around a fifth of coronavirus tests sent out have effectively been wasted. (See 2.59pm.)
That’s all from me for today.
Our coverage continues on our global coronavirus live blog. It’s here.
Updated
The Welsh first minister, Mark Drakeford, is under pressure to confirm he will pass on a £59m support package the UK government has announced to the arts in Wales.
Drakeford said at his press conference on Monday the Welsh government would decide how any additional money is spent only after UK chancellor Rishi Sunak gives his summer economic update later this week. He said:
I want to wait until we see the whole package, then cabinet will sit down, knowing how much money we have at our disposal, and attend to the many demands there are for help here in Wales, including help that is needed by the arts sector.
When the UK government announces a headline figure, what they very often don’t tell us is what is new money, and what is money that they are simply recycling from existing budgets.
It’s why I’m reluctant today to commit to saying anything on the £59m, because so easily on Wednesday we could learn that we are losing money from other changes made at Whitehall and there won’t be £59m after all.
The Welsh Conservatives leader, Paul Davies, said: “No ifs or buts. The Welsh government needs to urgently see to the 59m reaching out cultural venues.”
An open letter from Plaid Cymru calling for the money to be spent on the arts sector “in full” has been backed by the singer Charlotte Church and Catrin Finch, the former official harpist to the Prince of Wales.
In Scotland Nicola Sturgeon has said that the £97m it is getting as its share of the arts package will be passed on in full to arts organisations. (See 1.31pm.)
Hotels and private venues will be allowed to hold weddings in Northern Ireland from July 10, the first minister, Arlene Foster, has said.
Executive meeting just over. Good news for couples waiting to get married. 🎉 😃 pic.twitter.com/ERRsgFlpv2
— Arlene Foster #We’llMeetAgain (@DUPleader) July 6, 2020
The Welsh government will suspend school categorisation for the 2020/21 academic year, as part of its measures to reduce pressure on schools during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Every year, primary and secondary schools are measured against a range of factors and placed into one of four colour-coded categories – red, amber, yellow, green.
The system is designed to help identify schools that need the most support and guidance, those doing well but could be doing better and those that are highly effective and can act as support to other schools.
Kirsty Williams, the education minister, said:
My priority is to allow staff to focus their energies on the needs of pupils during these extraordinary and challenging times.
I am committed to help reduce the administrative workload on education settings, where it is appropriate and safe to do so.
And here are the stories from my colleagues Harriet Grant and Beatriz Ramalho da Silva on the coronavirus outbreak that hit Ministry of Justice cleaners. (See 4.46pm.)
Johnson criticised after claiming care homes did not follow procedures during Covid crisis
Boris Johnson has been criticised by the care home sector for suggesting they were partly to blame for the spread of coronavirus among their residents.
Asked today for his reaction to Sir Simon Stevens, the NHS England chief executive, saying yesterday that he wanted to see plans to adequately fund the adult social care sector within a year, Johnson replied:
One of the things the crisis has shown is we need to think about how we organise our social care package better and how we make sure we look after people better who are in social care.
We discovered too many care homes didn’t really follow the procedures in the way that they could have but we’re learning lessons the whole time.
Most important is to fund them properly ... but we will also be looking at ways to make sure the care sector long term is properly organised and supported.
In response Vic Rayner, executive director of the National Care Forum, which represents the not-for-profit care sector, said Johnson was wrong to say care homes ignored procedures. She said:
Mr Johnson’s comments in relation to care homes’ following of procedures are neither accurate nor welcome.
Government guidance has come to the sector in stops and starts - with organisations grappling with over 100 pieces of additional guidance in the same number of days, much of which was not accompanied by an understanding of the operational implications of operating care services.
Care providers have moved to adopt these new procedures consistently, at pace and with integrity.
The Independent Care Group (ICG), which represents care providers in Yorkshire, also criticised Johnson. Its chairman, Mike Padgham, said:
We should not be getting into the blame game and it is wrong to criticise care and nursing homes at this time.
It is worth remembering that in February the government agency Public Health England told homes it was ‘very unlikely that people receiving care in a care home will become infected’ and that homes didn’t need to do anything differently.
It was many weeks later, after most homes had already put themselves into lockdown, that the advice changed.
Padgham said it was only when the real death toll in care homes became apparent that the government accepted social care was as much on the front line as hospitals. He went on:
Care providers may not have got everything perfect but neither has the government.
For far too much of this pandemic, providers were operating in the dark over what they ought to do and with one arm behind their backs in terms of the support they were given. In those circumstances, they have worked miracles.
Updated
Jack Shenker has published a long investigation for Tortoise exposing a coronavirus outbreak among outsourced cleaners at the Ministry of Justice, and looking at how it was handled. There is a link here.
When #coronavirus arrived in Britain, the government told most of us to stay home, and keep safe. It told its own cleaners something very different.
— Jack Shenker (@hackneylad) July 6, 2020
The devastating story of what happened next - exclusive, and free-to-read @tortoise https://t.co/QSHK6kFQc5
And there is a Twitter thread summarising the key points starting here.
During Britain's #coronavirus lockdown, one group of people was forced to continue coming into work with little protection - and met with a total lack of support as sickness began to spread among them.
— Jack Shenker (@hackneylad) July 6, 2020
Their story matters, because they worked for the British government. [Thread]
Updated
The Labour frontbencher Steve Reed has apologised for the “puppet master” tweet he posted on Saturday about Richard Desmond. (See 9.17am.)
I want to apologise unreservedly for the language in the tweet I posted on Saturday. It was inappropriate and as soon as I realised my error I deleted it
— Steve Reed (@SteveReedMP) July 6, 2020
The Mirror’s Pippa Crerar explains why Reed was not sacked when Rebecca Long-Bailey was.
No further action to be taken against @SteveReedMP. Labour spox says: "Steve deleted the tweet and did not mean to cause any offence.”
— Pippa Crerar (@PippaCrerar) July 6, 2020
Understand he deleted tweet after sending - and before Labour party knew about it - and regrets language used. https://t.co/gdyuA25BW6
Some people accusing Starmer of double standards as Becky Long-Bailey was sacked over a tweet.
— Pippa Crerar (@PippaCrerar) July 6, 2020
The difference - as I understand it - is that when asked she didn't delete tweet. It stayed up until five days ago.
UK records a further 16 coronavirus deaths
The Department for Health and Social Care has published its daily coronavirus deaths update. It says there have been a further 16 deaths, taking the official headline total to 44,236.
This figure covers people who have tested positive for coronavirus and died in the UK. But it is not the full figure for coronavirus deaths because there have been another 10,000-odd deaths attributed to coronavirus where the person who died as not tested.
Our COVID-19 statistics website has been updated.
— Department of Health and Social Care (@DHSCgovuk) July 6, 2020
View the full UK dataset online:
➡️ https://t.co/xXnL3FU15k
You can also visit the @PHE_uk interactive dashboard which included local authority data for England:
➡️ https://t.co/8OHvHj6yyM
Welsh government orders audit of statues and place names related to slave trade
The Welsh first minister, Mark Drakeford, has ordered an urgent audit of statues, street and building names to address Wales’s connections with the slave trade.
Drakeford said:
The Black Lives Matter movement has brought to the fore a number of important issues we need to address as a country. One is the need for Wales to reflect on the visible reminders of the country’s past. This is especially true when we look at the horrors of the slave trade.
Some of our historic buildings are reminders of this painful period of our history. Some may appear to make heroes of historical figures whose actions we now condemn. Individuals connected to the slave trade may be remembered in street names or the names of public buildings. They are commemorations of a past that we have not fully challenged and that we should challenge now.
Updated
At least 1% of all Covid-19 infections in England over a six-week period from the end of April were picked up by patients in hospital for other reasons, a new report has revealed, with experts calling for urgent improvements in infection control and investigation of hospital-acquired cases.
The authors of the report, by a multidisciplinary group convened by the Royal Society called Delve (Data Evaluation and Learning for Viral Epidemics), say such infections could have accounted for a peak of around 10% of all hospital Covid-19 infections during the study period.
The study also reveals that during the same period, from 26 April to 7 June, at least 10% of all Covid-19 infections in England were among patient-facing healthcare workers and resident-facing social care workers – although it’s not clear what proportion of those infections were picked up at work.
“We estimate that care providers were at approximately four times the risk of infection of similar working age individuals in the country in that period,” said Dr Guy Harling, an author of the report from University College London.
Anne Johnson, professor of infectious disease epidemiology at UCL, vice-president of the Academy of Medical Sciences and a member of the Delve committee, said the report highlights the need to take action now as hospitals and other healthcare settings open up to tackle more non-Covid-19 related work.
“This is a really important time for us to prepare; we have got a window of opportunity now to get everything in place and to try also to be ready for winter and any other future waves of Covid-19,” she said.
The report draws on a range of data, including the ONS survey looking at prevalence of Covid-19 in the community in England and the Vivaldi study from the ONS looking at infections in care homes, to explore the prevalence of Covid-19 among health and social care staff, as well as patients in hospital and residents in care homes.
Updated
Back in the Lords committee Dido Harding says she is a retailer by trade. She say people judge you in retail by the quality of the experience. And in test and trace it is good, she says. She says most people get a test result by the following day. And she says from there people find their experience of dealing with the contact tracers positive.
The evidence session with Harding is now over.
Long-awaited UK government sanctions against human rights abusers in Saudi Arabia, Russia, Myanmar and North Korea have been unveiled by the foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, my colleagues Patrick Wintour and Luke Harding report.
Back in the Lords committee Dido Harding says the test and trace service has significant spare capacity in terms of contact tracers. That is because there are fewer daily cases than were anticipated.
But she says it will need to expand testing capacity. That is because, as the winter approaches, there will be an increase in the number of people needing a test because they have symptoms - even if the overall number of coronavirus cases is not rising. (There will be people requesting a test who have flu, or a cold.) But she says she is confident that they can expand testing capacity.
Simon Thompson, managing director of the NHS Covid-19 app, is also giving evidence to the Lords science committee alongside Dido Harding (or alongside her metaphorically - they are on Zoom.)
He says he will be publishing a report on what was learned from the pilot in the Isle of Wight, which led to the original app being ditched.
Updated
Aslef, the union that represents train drivers, has accused Boris Johnson of talking “nonsense” about driverless trains for the tube. (See 3.20pm.) Finn Brennan, the Aslef organiser for the London Underground, said:
As always, Boris Johnson is talking nonsense about driverless trains.
Slashing government funding to TfL means that they cannot afford the signalling upgrade and other technology that would be needed for driverless trains.
While pretending to support a ‘great leap forward’, the prime minister’s policies are actually preventing any progress with transport in the capital.
They mean that Londoners will suffer years of delays and overcrowding in the future.
Harding says what she is trying to build is a “digitally assisted human service”, not a purely digital service. She says she is doubtful whether people would be willing to give up their freedom for two weeks just on the basis of a text message.
Back at the Lords committee Dido Harding, head of the NHS test and trace scheme, says that if a contact-tracing app could be made to work, it would be a “significant benefit”. But she says she does not think any country in the world has developed an app that is working to a high enough standard for it to be used with confidence to advise people to self-isolate.
Updated
The opposition parties have condemned the government’s decision to abandon attempts to publish daily figures for the number of individuals tested for coronavirus. (See 1.03pm.)
This is from Labour’s Justin Madders, a shadow health minister.
This is an absolute shambles. It seems that the real reason why the government stopped issuing figures for the number of people tested each day is because they never hit their 100,000 people a day target and they were too embarrassed to admit it.
We know that the number of people actually tested is less than a third of the number of tests they state are being completed. It is clear that Ministers are losing control over the testing regime and are failing to not only keep track of the tests but to ensure the results are returned swiftly.
And this is from Layla Moran, the Lib Dem leadership candidate.
First the government cancelled the daily press conferences, now they’ve stopped publishing the numbers of people who’ve actually been tested for coronavirus.
It seems that at every stage, ministers are dodging scrutiny and covering up for their own failures.
Making data public is vital to ensure decision-makers are held to account. This shows we need to ensure full transparency through an independent and cross-party inquiry, so that this government can no longer try and pull the wool over people’s eyes.
Sturgeon condemns anti-English protest at Scottish border
Nicola Sturgeon, the Scottish National party leader and first minister, has denounced a small group of nationalists who staged a border protest against English visitors on the A1 at the weekend, some with SNP banners.
The demonstration was condemned by Humza Yousaf, the Scottish justice secretary, and the Scottish parliament’s most senior minority ethnic MSP, as “horrible, reprehensible and vile” after footage emerged of them shouting “stay the fuck out” and “plague carriers” at caravans and camper vans driving north.
If you are a racist you are no friend of mine and no part of the movement I belong to. Horrible, reprehensible and vile.
— Humza Yousaf (@HumzaYousaf) July 4, 2020
Luckily these morons don't represent the Scotland I know and love. https://t.co/PKt1XoF41D
Sturgeon was asked whether the SNP, run by her husband, Peter Murrell, would check whether the protesters were party members and investigate. She replied:
I can’t stop people waving SNP banners but I can be very clear that they don’t speak for us and we will be ... I’m not going to talk about internal disciplinary arrangements in the SNP [but] we have got well-established disciplinary rules which will be used if necessary.
But I can’t be clearer than I have been: the SNP is an open, welcoming party; Scotland is an open and welcoming country and that protest is not something I condone or endorse in any way, shape or form.
Jackson Carlaw, the Scottish Conservative leader, said on BBC Scotland’s Sunday Politics programme that type of protest would put off visitors, which Scotland’s tourist industry badly needed to attract. “We need people to come safely to Scotland to visit and to stay here on holiday and we should be encouraging that, not putting people off,” he said.
The demonstration, which follows reports of a similar instance on a bridge over the A30 as it entered Cornwall, where an image on social media purported to show three people standing on a bridge over the A30 holding a sign that read: “Turn around and fuck off.”
something quite 1970s horror movie about this road sign on the A30 approaching Cornwall, partly the washed-out colour and also the headless figures - hat tip @jamescaddy11 pic.twitter.com/lzAnOytQHk
— Jim Pickard (@PickardJE) July 4, 2020
Updated
In the Lords committee Harding says test and trace is trying to achieve a target of isolating 80% of contacts within 48 to 72 hours. This is the target set by Sage, she says.
She says the test and trace service is not there yet. But it is “close enough” so that it can see a path to reaching the target, she says.
Harding says the government is not testing people who have been in contact with someone who tested positive. She says this is on the advice of the chief medical officer, who argued that people might test negative, and then no longer self-isolate for 14 days - even though it can take up to 14 days for someone to develop coronavirus (and, until they develop it, they would test negative).
Back in the Lords committee, Dido Harding says she wants to see even more people being tested, particularly if they work in vulnerable occupations. This means she welcomes overall numbers going up, if that means more people are being tested, she says.
Johnson says driverless trains should be condition for new funding settlement for Transport for London
Boris Johnson has said that driverless trains should be a condition of the funding settlement for Transport for London this autumn. Speaking during his visit to Goole, and reviving an argument he first started making when he was mayor of London, he said:
You can run these trains without the need for somebody to be sitting in the driver’s cab the whole time.
So what I will be saying to the London transport authority is let’s take advantage of this technological leap forward, let’s not be the prisoners of the unions any more, let’s go to driverless trains, and let’s make that a condition of the funding settlement for Transport for London this autumn.
That’s the way forward for this country and we want to make use of the fantastic technology we’ve got and provide a better service for people in the capital and take the whole economy forward.
Test and trace chief Dido Harding gives evidence to Lords committee
Dido Harding, who is in charge of the NHS test and trace programme, is giving evidence to the Lords science committee.
She says in the first month the service was given details of 27,125 people who tested positive for coronavirus. It reached 20,039 (73.9%) of them, she says.
She says they provided details of 153,442 people they had been in contact with, and 86.5% of those contacted.
Q: Why could you not contact the other 7,000?
Harding says they will all have been told they tested positive. But some of them will have been very ill, which might be why they did not respond. And, for some of them, the wrong details may have been provided.
But she says, with a contact rate of 74%, the service is quite close to the 80% target set by Sage, the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies.
Around one fifth of coronavirus tests issued to people wasted, official figures suggest
Around 2.5m coronavirus tests sent out have effectively been wasted, government figures suggest. The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) says that since testing started a total of 10.5m tests have been “made available” but only 8m of those have been “processed”. That means that as many as a fifth of tests are either not being sent back to laboratories or are not capable of being processed.
At the Downing Street lobby briefing, asked to confirm that around 2.5m tests had been made available but not used, the prime minister’s spokesman said that he had not seen a “verified number on this”.
And there have been no further deaths in Northern Ireland either, according to the latest bulletin from the Department of Health in Northern Ireland.
There have been no further coronavirus deaths in Wales, Public Health Wales says.
The latest number of confirmed cases of Coronavirus in Wales has been updated.
— Public Health Wales (@PublicHealthW) July 6, 2020
Data dashboard:
💻 https://t.co/zpWRYSUbfh
📱 https://t.co/HSclxpZjBh
Find out how we are responding to the spread of the virus in our daily statement here: https://t.co/u6SKHz0zsG pic.twitter.com/J8pWfj2Cgt
Johnson says alcohol and physical distancing can go together 'if people are sensible'
Speaking to journalists on a visit to Goole in Yorkshire, Boris Johnson said he thought that “overwhelmingly” people had followed distancing rules when pubs in England opened on Saturday.
At the weekend the chairman of the Police Federation of England and Wales, John Apter, said, on the basis of what he saw when on duty on Saturday night, “what was crystal clear is that drunk people can’t/won’t socially distance.”
Asked about this claim, Johnson said alcohol and social distancing could mix “if people are sensible”. He went on:
Actually my evidence I’ve seen is yes there have been some places where people have been imprudent and you can see there’s been some people who have been getting it wrong.
But actually overwhelmingly over the weekend I think the people of this country did the right thing.
If we can keep it up, if we can keep going in the way we are, maintain discipline, enjoy ourselves but enjoy ourselves safely, then we will continue to drive down this virus and we will be able to get back to life as close to normal as possible as fast as possible.
Updated
NHS England has recorded a further 15 coronavirus hospital deaths. The full figures are here.
The 15 were aged between 42 and 93 and all had underlying health conditions, NHS England says.
For comparison, here are the equivalent daily figure for the last fortnight.
Monday 22 June - 20
Tuesday 23 June - 46
Wednesday 24 June - 51
Thursday 25 June - 55
Friday 26 June - 67
Saturday 27 June - 78
Sunday 28 June - 18
Monday 29 June - 19
Tuesday 30 June - 37
Wednesday 1 July - 50
Thursday 2 July - 35
Friday 3 July - 38
Saturday 4 July - 39
Sunday 5 July - 18
Here are some more lines from Nicola Sturgeon’s press briefing.
- Sturgeon urged customers in Scotland to comply with requirements imposed by pubs and cafes as outdoor hospitality spaces reopen in Scotland today. She said:
Hospitality staff, just like retail staff right now, are getting used to new ways of working in very difficult circumstances for them and they’ll be asking you to go about your business in different ways as well, so please show respect for them and for your fellow customers.
If we all do that then we can really help to support our hospitality and tourism sector to help it in that process of recovery and ensure that as we do so, we continue to suppress the virus and keep everybody safe.
- She said that that she was hopeful that, following some final checks, lockdown measures will be eased in the Annan and Gretna area. On Thursday last week she said that measures were not being relaxed there in line with the rest of Scotland because of outbreaks. But today she said there had only been one extra case since Thursday, bringing the total to 12.
- She said the £97m allocated for Scotland as its share of the £1.5bn arts bailout package would be passed on in full to arts organisations. She said:
I want to give an assurance today that the funding announced last night by the UK government will be passed on in full in Scotland to our arts, culture and heritage sector.
I hope today’s news together with last week’s announcement from the Scottish government will provide people working across the sector with some optimism about the future.
No 10 says it has abandoned attempts to provide daily figures for number of people tested for coronavirus
The Downing Street lobby briefing is over. Here are some of the main points.
- The prime minister’s spokesman said that the government has now abandoned attempts to provide a daily figure for the number of individuals being tested for coronavirus. Early in the crisis the government did publish daily figures for the number of individuals tested, alongside figures for the number of tests carried out. But the figure for the number of individual figures became increasingly embarrassing because, as the government intensified testing to meet its target of 100,000 tests a day by 1 May, the gap between the number of individuals being tested and the number of tests being carried out became ever larger. (On 30 April, when the government hit its target, 122,347 tests were carried out, but only 73,191 individuals were tested.) In May the government stopped publishing daily figures for the number of individuals being tested. Officials said that the government would resume publishing this figure once it had found a way of ensuring that the statistics were robust, and that people were not being counted twice. But today the spokesman said that that goal has now been dropped. He explained:
DHSC [the Department for Health and Social Care] will no longer publish the number of people tested daily any more, and will instead publish the number of daily tests processed. This is because the daily people tested statistic only counts new people being tested. For example, someone who was tested in February, and then tested again this month, would be counted once. Considering hospital and care home staff will now be tested on a regular basis, we don’t think this statistic would be an accurate reflection of the amount of daily testing that is taking place.
Test and trace statistics published weekly will include the number of people who have been tested.
But when the spokesman asked why it was not possible to change the system so that it could count a person being tested on a given day, even if they had been tested before, the spokesman was unable to give an explanation. He was also unable to explain why the government has continually given a figure for the number of testing kits sent out, but no figure for the number of testing kits sent out that do not get returned.
Until Friday last week DHSC used to publish a daily chart looking like this (the one from Friday).
As of 9am 3 July, there have been 10,120,276 tests, with 205,673 tests on 2 July.
— Department of Health and Social Care (@DHSCgovuk) July 3, 2020
284,276 people have tested positive.
As of 5pm on 2 July, of those tested positive for coronavirus, across all settings, 44,131 have sadly died.
More info:
➡️ https://t.co/r2YbE2e3O8 pic.twitter.com/qMl4xi4k4m
But on Saturday DHSC said it was no longer publishing this table (which highlighted the fact that daily testing figures for individuals were not available).
As of today, we are changing the format of our daily COVID-19 statistics update.
— Department of Health and Social Care (@DHSCgovuk) July 4, 2020
Rather than presenting data in a table on Twitter, we will direct you to our website when it is updated each day with a more detailed dataset:
▶️https://t.co/xXnL3FU15k
- The spokesman said that the PM thought most people behaved responsibly on Saturday, when lockdown restrictions were eased in England. He said:
It does look like the vast majority of people acted in a safe, sensible way ... Numerous police forces reported a quieter than expected weekend.
Asked if the PM agreed with the chairman of the Police Federation that drunk people cannot socially distance, the spokesman just said the vast majority of people behaved responsibly.
- The spokesman rejected suggestions that the government announcement last week about the relaxation of quarantine for 74 countries was misleading because many of these countries impose their own quarantine rules on visitors from Britain. (See 10.24am.) Asked if there was a danger of people looking at the list and concluding that they would be able to enter a country, when in fact that was not possible, the spokesman said that people should check the individual country pages on the gov.uk website before making travel plans.
- The spokesman said that the government guidance for England continued to be that people should not meet up in groups of more than six people from separate households outside - even though the ban in the lockdown legislation applies to groups of more than 30.
- The spokesman described the bailout for the arts announced today as the biggest ever single investment in UK culture.
- The spokesman said that Boris Johnson had a hair cut at the weekend. He also went for a drink in a pub near Chequers.
- Johnson is visiting a construction site in Yorkshire today. He will be meeting apprentices, and giving media interviews.
Updated
At her daily news briefing Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, said that no new coronavirus deaths had been reported in Scotland in the last 48 hours.
A total of 2,488 patients have died in Scotland after testing positive for coronavirus, Sturgeon said, giving figures for a two-day period as death figures could not be reported on Sunday for technical reasons.
She also said that 18,300 people have tested positive for the virus in Scotland, up by four from 18,296 on Sunday.
There are 646 people in hospital with confirmed or suspected Covid-19, a decrease of 20 in 24 hours.
Of these patients, eight were in intensive care, down by three.
Updated
There were queues at hair salons across Northern Ireland this morning as they reopened following lockdown. As PA Media reports, the first cuts came just after midnight as the Cambridge Barbershop in south Belfast opened its doors for appointments. Sean Lawlor, owner of the Cambridge Barbershop, said they had reopened at midnight for appointments, but ended up taking walk-ins as well. He said:
I was really excited to get in so I was wasting no time and wanted in as soon as possible. Once 6 July came about, we were open.
Updated
Labour has said the government must not allow a single university to fail, in its response to new analysis by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) that warns a number of universities could be at risk of insolvency as a result of the Covid-19 outbreak.
According to the IFS research, as many as 13 British universities could face financial disaster from the after-effects of the pandemic, potentially affecting one in 20 students in the UK and causing job cuts.
Emma Hardy, the shadow minister for further education and universities, said:
Universities can provide the training and skills we need to build back better as we emerge from the coronavirus crisis, but this report shows how under threat they are.
Losing any university or cutting courses would mean losing opportunities to reshape lives, particularly for people who can only study locally such as carers and those who cannot afford to move away.
The choice of a university education must remain available to everyone, wherever they live. The government cannot allow a single university to fail.
Updated
Keir Starmer's LBC phone-in – Summary
Here are the main points from Sir Keir Starmer’s LBC phone-in.
- Starmer said he thought everybody needed unconscious bias training and that he would be undertaking some himself. Labour was introducing it for all its staff, he said, and he said he would “lead from the top” and do the training first. Asked if he thought he needed it, he replied:
I think everybody should have unconscious bias training, I think it is important.
There is always the risk of unconscious bias and just saying: ‘Oh well it probably applies to other people not me’ is not the right thing to do.
So I’m going to lead from the front on this and do the training.
Starmer was replying to a question from a black Labour party member who said she had been very disappointed to hear Starmer describe Black Lives Matter as just a moment. She said that was dismissive, which is why she asked if he would be willing to undergo unconscious bias training. Responding to her point about his remark, Starmer said:
What I was saying last week was that Black Lives Matter needs to be a moment, and I meant a defining moment, a turning point, I didn’t mean a fleeting moment.
So I was saying let’s not get bogged down in some of the organisational issues, let’s treat it for what it is – a moment, a turning point, a defining moment.
I have to admit that if I’d put the word defining actually into the moment it would have been a lot easier but that’s what I meant.
The caller was “really pleased” with his reply.
- Starmer said that decision of the police to use handcuffs when stopping two black athletes in London was hard to justify and that a senior officer reviewing the case should feel “uncomfortable”.
- He said that he supported the principle of a wealth tax, but that he did not intend to announce firm tax policy now.
Labour left hopes of a wealth tax appear to be a little way off, going by this quote. Four years off, in fact.
— Theo Usherwood (@theousherwood) July 6, 2020
Keir Starmer says he will announce Labour's tax policy in the party's election manifesto.
Full quote below: pic.twitter.com/7FI8KWSahs
- He said Labour’s 2019 manifesto was “far too long” and that the next one would be “much shorter”.
- He said that Boris Johnson was wrong to blame teaching unions for pupils in England not going back to school earlier. The government itself was to blame, he said. He said:
What this needed was leadership at the top and a plan. And frankly, every school I’m spoken to has said it comes down to the space they’ve got. If they’ve got a lot of space, they can do it, if they haven’t, they can’t
The day the schools were closed, the prime minister should have set up a plan to get them back open.
Do you need pre-fab, do you need more classrooms built? Is there a library or a community centre you can use? These are the practical things we needed.
- He criticised Johnson for refusing to acknowledge that there were problems with the test and trace system. And he suggested Johnson’s hyperbole did not help either. “Nobody needs a world-beating system, we just need one that works,” he said.
- Starmer claimed not to be aware of the controversy about the Labour frontbencher Steve Reed posting a tweet describing Richard Desmond as a “puppet master”. He said he would look into it.
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Only 25 countries on government lists aimed at restarting foreign holidays are accessible for English visitors, according to new analysis.
As PA Media reports, last week the Department for Transport (DfT) named 74 countries and territories from where people will not need to quarantine if they return to or visit England from Friday. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) published a separate list of 67 destinations which are exempt from its advisory against all non-essential travel.
But analysis by the travel consultancy the PC Agency and the consumer research agency AudienceNet found that just 25 locations included on the lists do not have border controls that stop English visitors entering. Others are either closed to international flights or impossible to enter without quarantine or coronavirus testing, according to the analysis, PA Media reports.
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Online fashion retailer Boohoo has pledged to investigate how its clothes came to be made by a Leicester garment factory where workers were paid just £3.50 an hour in conditions that allegedly put them at greater risk of catching Covid-19, my colleague Rob Davies reports.
Coronavirus could lead to up to 35,000 excess deaths from cancer because of treatment delays, research suggests
Britain faces the prospect of up to 35,000 excess deaths within the next 12 months as a result of delays in cancer diagnosis and treatment caused by the coronavirus pandemic, research has suggested.
According to a study conducted by DATA-CAN, the Health Care Research Hub (HDR UK) for Cancer, up to two million routine breast, bowel and cervical cancer screenings may have been missed throughout the Covid-19 crisis.
Researchers examined data from eight hospital trusts in modelling outcomes depending upon how long the delays continue.
Sharing the results with BBC Panorama, researchers warned that a worst-case scenario could see 35,000 more people dying of cancer by this time next year.
DATA-CAN’s scientific lead Professor Mark Lawler told the programme:
Anecdotally, people have been telling us there were problems, but I think the critical thing was being able to actually have routine data from hospital trusts.
NHS England’s national clinical director for cancer Peter Johnson said the organisation was striving to restore cancer services back to normal levels as quickly as possible.
He told the BBC’s Panorama programme:
We’re working as fast as we can to put the services back together again, to restore the capacity and indeed to build more, so that we can deal with the people that have not been diagnosed during the time when the services have been running below 100%.
I’m hoping that we will get back to where we need to be by the end of the year.
BBC Panorama’s ‘Britain’s Cancer Crisis’ airs tonight at 7.30pm on BBC One.
Starmer says of course Prince Andrew should cooperate with the US authorities if asked to as part of their investigation into the Jeffrey Epstein case.
And that’s it. The phone-in is over.
Starmer criticises police over way they stopped and handcuffed two black athletes
Starmer says he has seen the video of the police stopping two black athletes trained by former Olympic champion Linford Christie in London. He does not think they handled it well, and he says he cannot see why they needed to use handcuffs.
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Q: Anneliese Dodds, the shadow chancellor, says a wealth tax might be needed to help tackle the crisis?
Starmer says she is right about this. That is one proposal that should be considered.
But he refuses to go into detail. This will be for Labour’s manifesto.
He says the 2019 manifesto was “far too long”. It had “far too much in it”, he says.
Q: Shouldn’t the government create a faster visa route for people from Hong Kong to come to the UK?
Starmer says he is shocked by the new law coming into force in Hong Kong. It undermines the commitments given to the people of Hong Kong. He says the government has made some strong statements on this, and Labour supports them.
Starmer says he welcomes the £1.5bn bailout for the arts. But the money should have come sooner, he says. Some arts groups have already gone under, he says.
'Nobody needs world-beating system, we just need one that works' – Starmer on test and trace
Q: Were the government right to ease the lockdown in the way they did?
Starmer says he does not know why it happened on a Saturday. It might have been better to do it on a better day, he suggests.
But he says Labour supported the easing of lockdown.
Boris Johnson is too flippant about risk, he says.
As an example, he cites Johnson telling the Labour MP Peter Kyle to show more “guts” when Kyle raised concerns about overcrowded beaches at PMQs. Two days later Bournemouth had to close its beach because of overcrowding.
Starmer says the government also needs a working test and trace system.
Nobody needs a world-beating system, we just need one that works.
Starmer says, when he questions the PM about this at PMQs, Johnson does not accept there is a problem. He just claims it is a success.
If Johnson were to admit there were a problem, people would think “fair do’s”, and accept he wanted to improve it, Starmer says.
Instead we have a prime minister who pretends problems aren’t there.
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Starmer says the furlough scheme should be extended for sectors that cannot return to normal by October.
Q: What do you want to hear from the chancellor on Wednesday?
Starmer says he wants Rishi Sunak to make the furlough scheme more flexible.
He says unemployment could hit 2m or 3m. We could see unemployment at a level we have not seen for a generation, he says. But he stresses that he does not want this to happen.
And he says he would like to see something like the future jobs fund, the job scheme introduced by Labour after the 2008 financial crisis.
Starmer defends his decision to sack Rebecca Long-Bailey from the shadow cabinet.
Asked about a tweet by the shadow local government minister Steve Reed calling Richard Desmond a “puppet master”, Starmer says he has not seen it. But he says he will look into this after the show.
Q: Isn’t it surprising you did not know about this?
Starmer says it had not been brought to his attention. It has now, and he will look into it.
Starmer says Labour is introducing unconscious bias training and he will do it himself
In response to a question from a caller, Starmer says Labour is introducing unconscious bias training for and that he will go on a course himself. He says it is important to lead from the top.
He says it will take two or three hours, and he will book in when he can, he says.
Ferrari plays a clip of Boris Johnson pre-recording a question asking if he agrees that pupils should be back in schools.
Starmer says he does support that. He says that Johnson is wrong to accuse the unions of being opposed to schools going back.
Keir Starmer's LBC phone-in
Sir Keir Starmer has arrived for his LBC phone-in.
He says he had his hair cut on Saturday.
Nick Ferrari, the presenter, says Jeremy Clarkson objects to Starmer’s hair.
In an interview at the weekend, Clarkson said he could vote for Labour with Starmer as leader. But he went on:
Keir Starmer – I appreciate there’s no love lost between newspapers and Keir and so on and he’s made a few mistakes and I don’t like his hair – it seems to be a single entity, it’s just one molecule, his hair, which is odd. But I don’t like Boris’s hair either so let’s not judge them on their hair.
Starmer ignores the point about the hair, but says he is grateful for every vote.
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Agenda for the day
Good morning. I’m Andrew Sparrow, taking over from Sarah Marsh.
Here is the agenda for the day.
9am: Sir Keir Starmer hosts his LBC “Call Keir” phone-in.
12pm: Downing Street lobby briefing.
12.30pm: The Scottish and Welsh governments are due to hold their daily press briefings.
3pm: Dido Harding, head of the NHS test and trace programme, gives evidence to the Lords science committee.
Afger 3.30pm: Dominic Raab, the foreign secretary, is expected to make a statement to MPs about the government’s new sanctions policy.
Theatres 'some way off' being able to perform again to audiences, says Dowden
Culture secretary Oliver Dowden said theatre performances without social distancing are “some way off”.
He said the reduction of distancing rules, such as on planes, has only been implemented in “exceptionally limited circumstances” and insisted “slow and baby steps” must be taken.
The chief executive of the Lighthouse venue in Poole, Elspeth McBain, had earlier told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that theatres cannot be viable with social distancing.
“With social distancing even at a metre-plus, the economics don’t work for live performance. Most venues work on a really tight margin – we need about 80% capacity to be able to turn a profit,” she said.
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Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham has said the UK should take a “bottom-up” approach to rebuilding local economies following the coronavirus pandemic.
He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme:
It’s all about jobs right now, saving jobs, creating jobs, retraining people for new jobs, so what I would call for would be substantial devolved funding so that we can lead a range of interventions into the labour market.
The truth is, the impact is going to be different in different places, so the recovery has to be locally led.”
He added:
In the response to the virus we’ve seen a very top-down approach, I would say to the government you’ve got to come at this the other way, bottom-up leading recovery.
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Culture secretary Oliver Dowden said he hopes outdoor performances can return “shortly” but there remains a “real risk” of coronavirus transmission inside theatres.
“I understand people’s frustration. They’re desperate for theatres to return, I’m desperate for theatres to return, but we have to do so in a safe way,” he told BBC Breakfast.
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Dowden plays down prospect of theatres being able to stage pantos this Christmas
Culture secretary Oliver Dowden said it would be “challenging” to get theatres back open for the Christmas pantomime season.
He told BBC Breakfast:
I would love to be able to announce that pantos can return but I have to say it will be quite challenging to be able to get to that point.
Because if you think about a panto, and we all love going to the panto for the joy of it, but it also supports local theatres, you’ve got granny through to grandchild all packed in together, you know how kids are encouraged to shout and scream at panto season, there’s lots of sort of interaction.
So I would love us to be able to do it. We’re working with Public Health England and others to see about mitigations but I just want to be a bit realistic about the challenges of getting us back to that point any time soon.
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The artistic director of the Young Vic theatre has welcomed the government’s support package for the arts.
Kwame Kwei-Armah told Times Radio:
I think for me and for many of my colleagues, we are relieved. When we heard last night, we slept for the first time since March.
It is a real vindication that we have been listened to and that the government understand that we were dying on our knees and also that we are an important part of our country’s recovery.
So we are very pleased for this intervention that will hopefully get us from here to April.
He added that he has been speaking to artistic directors at other theatres and knows that many of them are planning to use a portion of their money to support freelancers in the theatre industry.
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The Association of Colleges has welcomed the traineeships funding but called on chancellor Rishi Sunak to go further, with 3,000 of funding per apprenticeship to reduce damage to young people.
Chief executive David Hughes told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “We know that young people get treated really badly in recessions. We’re really worried about the end of furlough and the hit to the labour market on that so we need really bold action now on both labour market and on skills.”
He called for “an incentive to employers” of about 3,000 per apprentice they take on, and for students to get an extra year in college to prevent young people facing decades of insecurity and poorer outlooks in the job market.
“That scarring, as many people call it, is really, really worrying us,” he added. This is a really different type of recession where young people are going to come out of this really badly.”
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The government has announced a £1.57bn support package to “protect” the future of Britain’s museums, galleries and theatres. Independent cinemas, heritage sites and music venues are also eligible for the emergency grants and loans.
The government said: “Repayable finance (for the loans) will be issued on generous terms tailored for cultural institutions to ensure they are affordable.”
Arts Council England, the Royal Opera House, the Society of London Theatre & UK Theatre, and the Music Venue Trust were among those to welcome the funding.
Guidance for a phased return of the performing arts sectors is expected to be published by the government shortly. The package comes after some theatres – which are not yet able to stage live performances – closed down, making staff redundant, amid the pandemic.
Museums have also said they face an uncertain future, while 1,500 artists and acts signed a letter to the culture secretary, Oliver Dowden, calling for a road map for the live music industry.
The prime minister, Boris Johnson, said:
From iconic theatre and musicals, mesmerising exhibitions at our world-class galleries to gigs performed in local basement venues, the UK’s cultural industry is the beating heart of this country.
This money will help safeguard the sector for future generations, ensuring arts groups and venues across the UK can stay afloat and support their staff whilst their doors remain closed and curtains remain down.
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Morning and welcome to the UK live blog. I will bring you the latest news on what is happening with coronavirus.
Please do get in touch with me while to share any useful comments, insights and news tips.
Twitter: @sloumarsh
Instagram: sarah_marsh_journalist
Email: sarah.marsh@theguardian.com
