Afternoon summary
That’s all from me for today. But our coronavirus coverage continues on our global live blog. It’s here.
This is from James Timpson, head of Timpson, the family-run high street shoe repair company which is widely admired for its record employing ex-offenders. His brother Edward is a Conservative MP and a former children’s minister.
Instead of making offenders wear high viz jackets in chain gangs, how about helping them get a real job instead? In my shops we employ lots of ex offenders and they wear a shirt and tie. Same people, different approach, a much better outcome.
— James Timpson (@JamesTCobbler) July 27, 2021
According to the latest figures from NHS England, there are now 5,163 Covid patients in hospital in England. That is a rise of 32.6% on the equivalent total a week ago today (3,894).
And 738 of those patients are on mechanical ventilation. That is a 35.7% rise on the equivalent total for a week ago today (544).
The UK dashboard focuses on hospital admissions, but its most recent figure is for last Thursday, when 945 Covid patients were admitted to hospital in the UK. At that point weekly admissions were up 24.9% on the previous week.
These are from Prof Stephen Reicher, professor of social psychology at the University of St Andrews, on the PM’s Beating Crime Plan.
So, Johnson is playing the law and order card again, calling for more stop and search -
— Stephen Reicher (@ReicherStephen) July 27, 2021
despite the fact that College of Policing research concludes that it has minimal effect
despite the fact that the best predictor of rioting in 2011 was a high level of stop and search. pic.twitter.com/z9pWR3EqkP
The College of Policing report (https://t.co/KiIs0D29n8) concludes that the relationship between stop and search and crime is inconsistent and weak. Specifically, weapons searches do not reduce violent crime. pic.twitter.com/RBn1YiYKCv
— Stephen Reicher (@ReicherStephen) July 27, 2021
Our own research (https://t.co/wISlc0mjcF) shows that those London boroughs that saw rioting in 2011 had double the number of stops and searches in the previous 30 months compared to those that didn't. pic.twitter.com/tw2yfB8odG
— Stephen Reicher (@ReicherStephen) July 27, 2021
Dr Yvonne Doyle, medical director for Public Health England, says the rise in deaths in the UK Covid figures today (see 4.25pm) is a result of the rise in cases seen over recent weeks. In a statement she says:
Rates are still high and the pandemic is not over yet, today we have recorded the highest number of deaths since March.
This is in part due to the high number of cases recorded in recent weeks. We know deaths follow when there are a high number of cases and data today highlights we are still in the third wave.
Updated
UK Covid cases fall for seventh day in row, to 23,551, but 131 deaths recorded - highest total for more than 4 months
The government has just updated its coronavirus dashboard, and the number of reported new cases has again fallen, for the seventh day in a row. There have been 23,511 new cases, it says. A week ago today the equivalent figure was 46,558.
This is the lowest figure on this measure for almost a month (since 29 June, when 20,479 new cases were recorded.)
The total number of new cases over the past week is down 30.8% on the total for the previous week. Yesterday the weekly total was down 21.5% on the previous week, implying the rate of decline is accelerating.
But today’s dashboard also shows there have been 131 new coronavirus deaths. That is the highest daily total on this measure for more than four months (since 17 March, when 141 deaths were recorded). The weekly total for deaths is now up 40.4% on the total for the previous seven days.
Updated
Fair Trials, an international group campaigning for equality in justice systems, says in a statement that the government’s plan to permanently relax restrictions on the use of stop and search “will only exacerbate the already appalling levels of discrimination shown in existing section 60 suspicionless stop and searches”.
These are from Frances Crook, head of the Howard League for Penal Reform, on Boris Johnson’s Beating Crime Plan. (See 11.41am.)
The Beating Crime Plan is pretty weak. Much is repetition of what's been announced before - alcohol tags, hi viz unpaid work, tagging on release from prison. Nothing on fraud which is the most pervasive crime, no Victims Law.
— Frances Crook (@francescrook) July 27, 2021
The only good thing I can see in the #beatingcrimeplan is a bit of money for mental health and speech therapy in schools.
— Frances Crook (@francescrook) July 27, 2021
I've been mugged, burgled three times, handbag and purse stolen three times, and when I was younger sexually assaulted. Nothing in today's #beatingcrimeplan would have prevented this
— Frances Crook (@francescrook) July 27, 2021
Updated
This is from Diane Abbott, the former shadow home secretary, on Boris Johnson’s plan for offenders to be made to do unpaid work in hi-vis “chain gangs”. (See 12.37pm.)
This is a policy driven by the desire for favourable headlines. I has nothing to do with tackling crime or making people safer. https://t.co/HehSEgUJG2
— Diane Abbott MP (@HackneyAbbott) July 27, 2021
My colleague Jessica Elgot says the Home Office did not seem to know how the PM was going to describe the plan. In its news release, the Home Office said this was about “making unpaid work more visible by getting offenders to clean up streets, alleys, estates, and open spaces, and ensuring justice is seen to be done”. (See 11.41am.)
The Home Office were quite adamant yesterday when I said "is this the return of chain gangs?" that it was not the return of chain gangs. https://t.co/Rr42XSQRuJ
— Jessica Elgot (@jessicaelgot) July 27, 2021
Updated
Updated
Sturgeon accuses people criticising her over supposed missed vaccination deadline of lacking 'certain level of intelligence'
At her news conference Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, accused people who have criticised her for supposedly missing a vaccination target as lacking common sense and intelligence.
She said that when she said all people in a particular group would be vaccinated by yesterday, it should have been obvious that she meant they would all be offered a vaccination by then.
Scottish Labour has accused Sturgeon of a “humiliating” failure because a few weeks ago she told MSPs “by 26 July we expect to have given second doses to all 40- to 49-year-olds”. It is now 27 July, and just over 75% of people in this age group have been fully vaccinated.
When asked why this target was missed, Sturgeon said she was glad the question was asked because she wanted to address this directly. She went on:
I communicate at a level where I assume a certain level of intelligence on the part of people listening to me because I think that’s justified, and I assume a certain ability to attach context and common sense to what I’m saying.
She said opposition politicians, and some journalists, had taken her words as a guarantee that by a certain date 100% of people would have had the vaccine. She went on:
If that is genuinely what journalists and opposition politicians thought I meant, and had committed to that without compulsory vaccination, I’m genuinely really surprised that there wasn’t a clamour of questions - I don’t think there was a single one - asking me how I was going to deliver that commitment.
How could I, without saying vaccination would be compulsory for every person with no exception, even if they’d had the virus within four weeks - which right now means you can’t get vaccinated - how can I possibly have guaranteed 100% uptake of a voluntary vaccination programme?
Maybe I need to not make the mistake of assuming a level of ability to put context and common sense around how I communicate things? Everybody with any thought would have known - not least because it’s what all governments across the UK are doing - that what I was committing to, which is what we have delivered; it’s making sure 100% had been offered an appointment for a vaccine.
Updated
Liberty says PM's hi-vis chain gang plan for offenders 'will cause long-term harm'
Liberty, the human rights group, has denounced Boris Johnson’s plan for offenders to be made to do unpaid work in hi-vis “chain gangs” (see 12.37pm) as a “stunt” that will cause “long-term generational harm”.
Talk of chain gangs shows this plan has nothing to do with making communities safer.
— Liberty (@libertyhq) July 27, 2021
It's designed to create more stigma and division.
A short-term stunt that will cause long-term generational harm. https://t.co/f9f7QYbUcI
Updated
Back at her press conference, Nicola Sturgeon is asked if she thinks people who do not get vaccinated are guilty of antisocial behaviour.
She says she does not think it is helpful to treat everyone in this group as the same.
But it is undoubtedly the case that, every time someone who could be vaccinated does not get vaccinated, that holds back the progress towards normality.
It is a civic duty to get vaccinated.
She says anti-vaxxers who are spreading misinformation about the vaccine are guilty of antisocial behaviour, because they are putting people at risk.
But if you are someone worried because of this information, Sturgeon says she would urge you to learn more about the vaccine.
She says there may also be people who have been too busy to get vaccinated. She understands that, she says. The government will do all it can to make vaccination accessible.
Updated
Ken Clarke has said he was “not responsible” for blood products during his time as health minister in the early days of the infected blood scandal, PA Media reports. PA says:
Clarke, who held the position of health minister from 1982 to 1985, said the emerging controversy surrounding the blood products was something that “hardly ever came across my desk” as he was dealing with policies such as closing “old Victorian asylums” or getting rid of “old geriatric hospitals”.
He is appearing in front of the Infected Blood Inquiry this week to give evidence surrounding the scandal, which emerged in the 1980s and saw thousands diagnosed with HIV/Aids and/or hepatitis after receiving blood product treatments for haemophilia.
Clarke held the position of health minister from 1982 to 1985 and was health secretary from 1988 to 1990.
Appearing at the inquiry on Tuesday, he told lead counsel Jenni Richards QC: “As the tragedy with the haemophiliacs developed, I was aware it was there. From time to time, usually on my own instigation, I got on the edge of it.
“I didn’t call meetings on it. I was never the minister directly responsible for blood products. I was never asked to take a decision on blood products. I never intervened to take a decision on blood products. I did intervene or get involved in discussions a bit when I wanted to be reassured.”
Sturgeon says she is confident the government will make progress.
Everyone wants to see the remaining restrictions eased, she says.
But she says they will have to do that with caution and care.
Sturgeon says case numbers have more than halved in the last three weeks.
And the positivity rate is down from just over 10% at the start of the month, to around 7%. And today’s positivity rate is the lowest since mid-June.
The latest figures are here. There have been 1,044 new cases, and seven further deaths. There are 472 people with coronavirus in hospital. And the test positivity rate is 5.6%.
Updated
Sturgeon says the Scottish government hopes go ahead with further unlocking on 9 August.
She says she will make a statement to the Scottish parliament on Tuesday next week saying whether that can go ahead as planned.
Sturgeon says 90% of Scottish adults have now had first dose of vaccine
Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, is hold a Covid briefing.
She starts by saying more than 4 million Scots have now had a first dose of vaccine.
All adults have been offered a first dose, and 90% have taken up that offer, she says.
And she says around 70% of adults have had both doses.
She says these are extraordinary take-up figures.
But she wants to get everyone vaccinated.
Updated
Since Brexit trade in services has declined much more with EU countries than with non-EU countries, ONS says
A report from the Office for National Statistics says that, since Brexit, trade in services with EU countries has declined much more than trade in services with non-EU countries. It says:
In quarter 1 2021, total service exports decreased by 11.7% compared with pre-pandemic levels in quarter 1 2019, with imports decreasing by 24.2% over the same period.
Exports to and imports from the EU have experienced larger declines in trade compared with non-EU countries, with service exports to EU countries having decreased by 14.7% and imports by 38.8% in quarter 1 2021 compared with quarter 1 2019.
Compared with the same period, services trade with non-EU countries experienced declines to a much lesser degree, with exports to non-EU countries having declined by 9.9% and imports by 11.3%.
Holly Lynch, the shadow crime reduction minister, told Sky News that the Beating Crime plans published by Boris Johnson today (see 11.41am and 12.37pm) did not address the key problem. She told Sky News:
Stats from last year suggest that only around one in 40 crimes reported to the police resulted in a charge. So actually this was tough talk but the action is just not there.
This government are the architects of the systemic problem, the reasons why people are not feeling safe, and this is all quite reactionary stuff that we are seeing from them today.
She also said the key problem facing the criminal justice system was lack of resources.
There’s no shortcuts to boots on the ground in policing. That is the reason why so many crimes are going uncharged and unpunished. What we need is to invest in those resources. So [while the government is] tinkering with powers. actually the problem is a lack of police officers to be proactive, to get a grip early on with some of these problems we are seeing.
Updated
Richard Ford, the former home affairs correspondent at the Times, says there is nothing new about a government saying it wants offenders being made to unpaid work as a punishment being forced to be more visible. (See 12.37pm.)
2008 Jack Straw announces criminals will wear high vis jackets while doing unpaid work in the community. 2021 Priti Patel announces we are relaunching unpaid work so it is "more visible" to ensure offenders are publicly making reparations by doing work valuable to local area.
— richard ford (@RFord4) July 27, 2021
Boris Johnson says people guilty of antisocial behaviour should be in hi-vis ‘chain gangs'
Here are the main points from Boris Johnson’s pooled TV interview at Surrey Police HQ.
- Johnson said the lockdown had led to an increase in antisocial behaviour. He said:
I do think that the lockdown has driven some antisocial behaviour and we need to deal with it. That’s why we are backing the police in the way that we are.
- He said he wanted to see offenders doing unpaid work in high-vis “chain gangs”. He said:
I also want to see those who are guilty of antisocial behaviour properly paying their debt to society.
Somebody’s antisocial behaviour may be treated as a minor crime but it could be deeply distressing to those who are victims.
If you are guilty of antisocial behaviour and you are sentenced to unpaid work, as many people are, I don’t see any reason why you shouldn’t be out there in one of those fluorescent-jacketed chain gangs visibly paying your debt to society.
So you are going to be seeing more of that as well.
-
He defended his plan to extend the use of stop and search. He said:
I disagree with the opponents of stop and search. Section 60 stop and search orders, I think, can play an important part in fighting crime.
They are not the only tool that we have got to use. They are part of a range of things we have got to do to fight street crime.
I think that giving the police the backing that they need in law to stop someone, to search them, to relieve them of a dangerous weapon - I don’t think that’s strong-arm tactics, I think that’s a kind and a loving thing to do.
The people who often support stop and search most passionately are the parents of the kids who are likely themselves to be the victims of knife crime.
- He defended his plan to ensure communities have a named police officer they can contact. (See 11.54am.) He said:
What you need is somebody who understands what’s going on in your neighbourhood, who understands who the likely miscreants are, who understands whether the thing you are reporting - the crime that you are experiencing - is a one-off or part of a trend.
- He rejected claims that he was not funding the police properly. He said:
What we are doing is investing massively in the police.
When I stood on the steps of Downing Street two years ago I said I wanted another 20,000 officers on the streets of our country.
We are now almost half the way there. We are putting £15.8bn into supporting our police.
But of course it’s been a tough time financially for the whole country.
- He said people should not draw “premature conclusions” from the recent drop in new Covid cases. He said:
I’ve noticed, obviously, that we are six days in to some better figures. But it is very, very important that we don’t allow ourselves to run away with premature conclusions about this.
Step 4 of the opening-up only took place a few days ago, people have got to remain very cautious and that remains the approach of the government.
Updated
Nicola Sturgeon’s press conference is at 2pm today, not 12.15pm as I said earlier in the agenda. It has been delayed because of the Olympics.
📺 I will give a Covid update today at 2pm (later time due to Olympics coverage) covering latest case/hospital/vaccine numbers, and assessing progress ahead of next week’s review of restrictions. I’ll be joined by @jasonleitch. Tune in if you can.
— Nicola Sturgeon (@NicolaSturgeon) July 27, 2021
Johnson also says it is very important that people do not run away with premature conclusions about the recent fall in cases.
I will post full quotes from his interview shortly.
Johnson says lockdown has led to increase in antisocial behaviour
Sky News is broadcasting an interview Boris Johnson has done on his visit to Surrey Police HQ this morning.
He sums up some of the proposals announced today (see 11.41am), focusing on the plan for people to be able to contact a named police officer.
And he defends the plan to relax the restrictions on stop and search. Parents of children likely to be victims of knife crime are among those most in favour of this, he says.
The lockdown has increased antisocial behaviour, he says. He says he wants to deal with it.
People are are guilty of this should properly pay their debt to society, he says.
If you are sentenced to unpaid work, should be out there in a fluorescent-jacketed chain gang, he says.
UPDATE: Johnson said:
If you are guilty of anti-social behaviour and you are sentenced to unpaid work, as many people are, I don’t see any reason why you shouldn’t be out there in one of those fluorescent-jacketed chain gangs visibly paying your debt to society. So you are going to be seeing more of that as well.
Updated
One of the main proposals in the Beating Crime Plan is for every neighbourhood in England and Wales to have a named and contactable police officer dedicated to it. In an article for the Sunday Express Boris Johnson said every crime victim would get a named officer, but the Home Office says this amounts to the same thing.
Labour is saying this should be in place anyway. In a briefing it says the Ministry of Justice’s code of practice for victims (pdf) already promises them “wherever possible ... a single point of contact for information” and the College of Policing’s victims’ code promises the same thing.
Labour is also dismissive of the plan for a league table for 999 response times, saying the police already have binding targets saying they should respond to grade 1 emergency calls within 15 minutes.
The opposition also says the new officers being recruited by Boris Johnson will not compensate for the number of officers and police community support officers cut since 2010.
Nick Thomas-Symonds, the shadow home secretary, said:
This announcement of rehashed policies won’t make our streets safer.
The Conservatives are all talk and no action when it comes to tackling crime. On their watch, police numbers are down and community policing has been decimated. Coupled with an insulting pay freeze, it is no wonder frontline police have declared no confidence in the home secretary.
Updated
Home Office publishes Beating Crime Plan
The Home Office has now published its 50-page Beating Crime Plan (pdf).
Here is an extract from the news release issued overnight summarising what is in the plan.
Every neighbourhood in England and Wales will have a named and contactable police officer dedicated to its service.
League tables to be brought in for 101 and 999 call answering times, so the public can see how responsive their force is when they call them for help.
Plan follows the delivery of thousands more police officers as the government backs the police with more powers and resources to fight crime ....
Expanding the use of electronic monitoring so burglars and thieves will have their whereabouts monitored 24 hours a day upon release from prison.
Permanently relaxing conditions on the use of section 60 stop and search powers to empower police to take more knives off the streets.
Trialling the use of alcohol tags – which detect alcohol in the sweat of offenders guilty of drink-fuelled crime – on prison leavers in Wales. This is to address the fact alcohol is a significant driver of crime, playing a part in 39% of all violent crime.
Making unpaid work more visible by getting offenders to clean up streets, alleys, estates, and open spaces, and ensuring justice is seen to be done.
Investing over £45m in specialist support in both mainstream schools and alternative provision – including mental health professionals, family workers, and speech and language therapists – in serious violence hotspots to support young people at risk of involvement in violence to re-engage in education
A new £17m package for violence reduction units to provide high-intensity therapeutic and specialist support from trained youth workers, including at crisis points such as when a young person is being admitted to A&E with a knife injury or upon arrest, to divert them away from violence.
Rolling out two further rounds of the safer streets fund to increase the safety of public spaces through steps including targeted patrols, increased lighting and CCTV, and work with councils to design out crime.
Enhancing the role for police and crime commissioners by launching the second part of the PCC review to equip them with the tools they need to drive down crime and anti-social behaviour in their local areas.
Photograph: Yui Mok/PA
Updated
Hospitals under almost as much pressure as they were in January, health leaders tell ministers
Hospitals are under almost as much pressure as they were in January, at the height of the second wave, NHS Providers has said in an open letter to the prime minister and other ministers.
The organisation, which represents hospitals and other NHS trusts, said that although hospitals were not dealing with as many Covid cases as they were then, in other respects the pressures are almost as intense. In their letter (pdf) Chris Hopson, chief executive of NHS Providers, and Saffron Cordery, his deputy, say:
You will be aware that the NHS is currently grappling with a very difficult combination of pressures:
Going at full speed to recover care backlogs across hospital, mental health and community services
Very high, often record, levels of demand for urgent and emergency care including in ambulance services
Growing numbers of Covid-19 hospital admissions alongside a rapid growth in mental health and long Covid presentations
Significant loss of capacity due to the need to protect patients and staff from nosocomial infection
A large number of staff self-isolating as the number of Covid-19 community infections rises, though we strongly welcome the announcement you made on this issue last week
The service now entering peak summer leave, with significant amounts of extra leave that was postponed to enable the NHS to cope with previous waves of Covid-19 now, rightly, being taken
This combination means that many trust chief executives are saying that the overall level of pressure they are now experiencing is, although very different in shape, similar to the pressure they saw in January of this year when the NHS was under the greatest pressure in a generation.
In their letter Hopson and Cordery make seven proposals to ensure that the NHS is properly funded over the second half of the current financial year, although they do not put an specific price tag on their submission.
Updated
In two regions of England, the number of deaths involving Covid-19 registered each week has climbed to the highest level since March, PA Media reports. PA says:
North-west England saw 71 deaths registered in the week to 16 July.
This is the highest number for the region since 106 deaths were registered in the week to 26 March, according to the latest ONS figures.
In north-east England, 24 deaths were registered in the week to 16 July - the highest since 35 deaths in the week to 26 March.
The Office for National Statistics says 218 of the 9,697 deaths registered in England and Wales in the week ending Friday 16 July, or 2.2%, involved coronavirus. The previous week there were 183 coronavirus deaths, accounting for 1.9% of the weekly total.
These are still, in relative terms, small numbers, but they doubled over a fortnight. In the week ending Friday 2 July there were 109 coronavirus deaths in England and Wales, accounting for 1.2% of the weekly total.
Today the government is publishing its Beating Crime Plan. As my colleague Jessica Elgot reports, MPs and campaigners have expressed alarm at some of the proposals in it, including more frequent stop and search, a trial of “alcohol tags” and criminals undertaking “visible” community service cleaning streets.
Another problem for Boris Johnson is that he is launching this less than a week after the national council of Police Federation of England and Wales passed a vote of no confidence in Priti Patel, the home secretary, partly because officers are having their pay frozen.
This morning Kit Malthouse, the policing minister, told LBC that pay was not the only thing the government could use to show officers they were supported. He said:
There are other things that we can do to make police officers feel valued and supported.
Later in legislation this year we have got the police covenant coming, which is looking at wellness, safety, family support to make sure that police officers feel we are looking after them physically and mentally as they do their challenging job.
Obviously we are making sure there are lots more of them to get out there and shoulder the burden more widely, there’s lots that we can do.
Updated
Scotland's early exit from Euro 2020 helped bring down Covid spike, says health chief
Prof Jason Leitch, the Scottish government’s national clinical director, told the Today programme this morning that coronavirus cases in Scotland were “dramatically falling”. He explained:
We had five out of the top 10 local authorities in the UK, now we have none in the top 150.
We’ve now seen hospitalisations fall. Around 3% of positive people get admitted to hospital but they are now younger, relatively healthy and discharged quicker. But some stay, and we’ve had many deaths over the last few days.
Here is the chart from the Scottish government’s dashboard confirming this trend.
Leitch also confirmed that Euro 2020 contributed to the spike in cases in Scotland last month. At one point while the tournament was one new cases amongst men were outnumbering new cases amongst women by almost 10 to one, he said.
He also said that Scotland’s early exit from the tournament was a good result in public health terms, if not in other respects. He explained:
The Scotland-England game gave us a spike because of travel, not necessarily Wembley. Unfortunately, from a sporting perspective, Scotland went out far too early. But epidemiologically speaking, that probably did us some favours.
We tested a lot of these fans and for a short time [cases] went from 1:1 male-female to 9:1 male-female. It has now returned to 1:1.
Updated
Prof Ferguson says by autumn 'bulk of pandemic' will be behind us
Prof Neil Ferguson, the epidemiologist from Imperial College London who has produced some of the most influential modelling used to inform government Covid policy, told the Today programme this morning that it was “too early to tell” whether the recent decline in the daily number of recorded cases would prove permanent and that it was important to “remain cautious”.
But he said that the situation was changing, and that by the autumn “the bulk of the pandemic” would be behind us. He said:
We won’t see for several more weeks what the effect of the unlocking is.
We need to remain cautious, especially with the potential increase in contact rates again as the weather becomes less fine and schools return.
We’re not completely out of the woods, but the equation has fundamentally changed. The effect of vaccines is hugely reducing the risk of hospitalisations and death. And I’m positive that by late September or October time we will be looking back at most of the pandemic.
We will have Covid with us, we will still have people dying from Covid, but we’ll have put the bulk of the pandemic behind us.
Clearly the higher we can get vaccination coverage, the better - that will protect people and reduce transmission - but there is going to be remaining uncertainty until the autumn.
Updated
Four-fold expansion in daily testing centres for workers in England’s ‘frontline sectors’
Good morning. On Friday last week the government announced that it was setting up 500 Covid testing sites so that workers in the food supply industry, if told to isolate because they had been in contact with someone testing positive, could instead do a daily test as an alternative. It was the government’s first response to concern about the so-called “pingdemic”, and reports that hundreds of thousands of workers would be missing work because they were having to isolate. But at the time George Eustice, the environment secretary, stressed that this was only a limited measure, and that for most people the government was still committed to test, trace and isolate as its strategy.
Over the weekend the government announced that it was expanding the scheme further, with 200 more testing centres to cover emergency service staff – some police, firefighters, Border Force staff and transport workers. But last night a further, significant extension of the scheme was announced. The government said another 1,200 sites were being set up to cover “frontline sectors” and it said that this would take the total number of sites to 2,000 in England. That is a four-fold increase on what was on the table just four days ago.
Explaining the new sectors that will now be covered by the scheme, the government said:
In addition to critical staff working in prisons, defence and waste collection, people working in energy, pharmaceuticals, telecoms, chemicals, communications, water, space, fish, veterinary medicine and HMRC will also be prioritised for the 1,200 new daily contact testing sites.
This is not exactly a U-turn, but it is definite shift in tone from last week when, apart from the specific measures for the food supply industry, the government’s main response to “pingdemic” concerns was a scheme saying named workers could be exempt, provided their employers got specific permission from a government department.
Here is the agenda for the day.
9.30am: The ONS publishes its latest weekly death figures for England and Wales.
10am: Ken Clarke, the former Conservative cabinet minister, gives evidence to the infected blood inquiry.
Morning: Boris Johnson and Priti Patel, the home secretary, hold a visit to mark the publication of the government’s Beating Crime Plan.
11.30am: The all-party parliamentary group on coronavirus takes evidence from people with long Covid.
12.15pm: Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, holds a coronavirus briefing.
Politics Live has been a mix of Covid and non-Covid news recently and that will probably be the case today. For more coronavirus developments, do follow our global Covid live blog.
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