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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Politics
Andrew Sparrow

UK Covid: Johnson says threat posed by Indian variant will be clearer ‘in a few days’ – as it happened

Afternoon summary

  • Boris Johnson has said that the government will have a clearer idea of the threat posed by the Covid variant originating in India “in a few days’ time”. He said there was not enough evidence available to justify changing policy now. But that was the position “at the moment”, he said, and his comments implied that there could be an announcement in the near future about a revision to the current plan to lift all Covid restrictions in England on 21 June. (See 12.54pm.)
  • Lord Frost, the Brexit minister, has told a Lords committee that the UK wants the EU to agree to a New Zealand-style equivalence deal on food standards to reduce the needs for checks on goods going from Britain to Northern Ireland. This is from my colleague Lisa O’Carroll.

That’s all from me for today. But our coronavirus coverage continues on our global live blog. It’s here.

Updated

Covid-19 case rates in Bolton have climbed to their highest level since January, PA Media reports:

A total of 867 new cases of coronavirus were recorded in the seven days to 14 May - the equivalent of 301.5 cases per 100,000 people.

This is up from 150.2 the previous week and is the highest since the seven days to 24 January.

Bolton continues to have the highest rate of new Covid-19 cases in the UK.

Blackburn with Darwen in Lancashire has the second highest rate, up week-on-week from 86.2 to 131.6, with 197 new cases.

Bedford has the third highest, up week-on-week from 64.6 to 128.1, with 222 new cases.

All figures have been calculated by the PA news agency from Public Health England data published this afternoon.

Updated

Savanta ComRes released a poll yesterday suggesting the Conservatives have an 11-point lead over Labour, up three points over the past week. Today it has released its polling on the party leaders and it makes grim reading for Sir Keir Starmer.

The data is on a Twitter thread starting here. Later the tables should be on the company’s website.

Boris Johnson has increased his lead over Starmer on best leader.

And, on characteristics, Starmer outperforms Johnson on just two measures in this poll: honesty, by four points, and trustworthiness, by just one point.

Most commentators would agree that being seen as only marginally more trustworthy than Boris Johnson is not much of a recommendation.

This is from Mark Drakeford, the Welsh first minister.

From Shaun Lintern, the Independent’s health correspondent

Labour has criticised the government for allowing travel to amber list countries. In a statement Nick Thomas-Symonds, the shadow home secretary, said there should be a pause on international travel. He said:

The Conservatives’ border policies have unravelled into dangerous chaos within a matter of hours since international travel was opened up.

There is a lack of strategy, which has meant the UK government, and their own ministers, are giving out conflicting and confused advice about whether people are allowed to travel, especially between ‘amber list’ countries.

Labour has been clear that there should be a pause on international travel, to guard against further importing of dangerous strains, setting back hopes for ending restrictions.

The Scottish government will consider legislation to counter the “disgusting and disgraceful” anti-Catholic and anti-Irish bigotry on display during the violence and disorder from Rangers fans in Glasgow city centre last weekend.

As a number of MSPs called for action following the weekend’s shocking scenes, which saw attacks on police officers, widespread vandalism and grotesque anti-Catholic chants, justice secretary Humza Yousaf said that he would ideally work with Scottish footballing authorities and Rangers football club to ensure that such events were not repeated, but that the parliament would consider legislating for strict liability, whereby the club would be held responsible for the behaviour of its fans at matches.

“Strict liability should be on the table,” he said. He went on:

Other suggestions I’ve heard include potentially an independent regulator, as has been discussed for the English game ... the clubs can also take stronger action. Rangers Football Club have committed to work with Police Scotland. I hope any supporter, any fan, anybody involved in Rangers Football Club that has been found guilty of being involved in anti-Catholic bigotry or vandalism or disorder will get a lifetime ban from the club. That is a punishment that probably fans would fear the most.

Updated

A woman leaving a mobile vaccination bus in Bolton today.
A woman leaving a mobile vaccination bus in Bolton today. Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

The UK has recorded seven further Covid deaths and 2,412 new cases, according to the latest update on the government’s coronavirus dashboard. Yesterday the dashboard showed that, comparing the last seven days with the total for the previous week, deaths and cases were both rising week on week (by 7.1% and 1.1% respectively). But today’s figures have reversed the trend and today deaths are going down week on week by 27.9%, and cases are falling by 2.6%.

Covid dashboard
Covid dashboard. Photograph: Gov.UK

Updated

The increasing speculation about the possible need for a return to the tiering system seems to have alarmed those Conservative MPs most opposed to lockdowns, national or local. One of those is Sir Graham Brady, the chair of the backbench 1922 Committee, and he has told Sky News in an interview that it is “really important” that Boris Johnson sticks to his plan to abandon all restrictions in England from 21 June.

The Good Law Project has been in court today at the start of a fresh legal case against the government over its handling of Covid PPE contracts. As the Jess Glass reports in the Evening Standard, it suffered a setback when the judge ruled that the amount spent on unusable PPE did not need to be disclosed.

This is from Jolyon Maugham, who runs the Good Law Project.

Ahead of the hearing starting the Department of Health and Social Care posted a lengthy statement about the issue on its website. Here is an extract.

Good Law Project is challenging the Department of Health and Social Care on whether the government acted lawfully in awarding specific contracts. These legal proceedings relate to just nine of the 332 PPE contracts the department signed during a period of extremely high and urgent need.

The claims must also be balanced with the success of a programme since the beginning of the pandemic.

Updated

Sturgeon pledges Covid recovery programme on re-election as Scotland's first minister

Nicola Sturgeon has been re-elected Scotland’s first minister with a pledge her new government will immediately implement a Covid-focused recovery programme, giving that primacy over the quest for a fresh independence vote.

Sturgeon won with the votes of only the Scottish National party’s 64 MSPs after the Scottish Greens, the SNP’s putative suitors in a post-election pact, abstained because no agreement had been reached on any deal.

Douglas Ross, the Scottish Conservative leader, and Willie Rennie, the Scottish Liberal Democrat leader, put up token resistance by standing against her to ensure there was a vote. They only won the support of their 31 and four respective MSPs.

Sturgeon had come under intense pressure from Labour, the Tory and Lib Dem leaders to drop plans for a second independence referendum, and focus solely on ending the pandemic and investing in the recovery. Rennie said her government should appoint a dedicated “minister for the recovery”.

Anas Sarwar, for Scottish Labour, said Holyrood’s central mandate from voters was to focus on tackling the impacts of the Covid crisis on jobs, the NHS and education; it would be wrong to ask civil servants to invest time in planning for a new referendum. He said:

Right now, we need a first minister for everyone in Scotland. Not a campaigner leading a movement for half the country; but a first minister who will lead a national recovery for everyone.

Sturgeon acknowledged the thrust of their demands: her “first and driving priority” was to steer Scotland through the pandemic and implement the recovery.

She said her new government, which will start taking shape over the next few days with key cabinet appointments, would immediately implement the 100-day plan outlined in the SNP’s election manifesto.

That included speeding-up the vaccinations programme; opening three fast-track cancer diagnosis centres to catch-up on delayed referrals; consulting on a new national care service; setting up 5,000 new industry-focused college places; starting roll-out of higher child poverty payments.

She said the country was clearly divided on the case for independence, and those who did not support it needed to be listened to. That referendum would come, however, she said. “By any measure of parliamentary democracy, there’s a clear mandate for a referendum within this term of parliament,” she insisted.

Nicola Sturgeon arriving at Holyrood today.
Nicola Sturgeon arriving at Holyrood today. Photograph: Jane Barlow/PA

Updated

Vaccinating children in countries like UK ahead of adults in poorer countries morally wrong, says expert

Prof Andrew Pollard, who as director of the Oxford Vaccine Group that helped develop the Oxford/AstraZeneca jab, has said it would be morally wrong to vaccinate children in wealthy countries when high-risk groups in poorer nations remain unvaccinated.

Speaking a day after Matt Hancock, the health secretary, told MPs that the UK has secured enough Pfizer vaccine to be able to vaccinate children aged 12 and older if it is clinically approved, Pollard said children had a “near-to-zero” risk of severe disease or death from Covid.

Speaking to the all-party parliamentary group on coronavirus, Pollard said:

When you look at the overall aim of a global vaccination programme in a pandemic, it’s to stop people dying. And we know who those people are - that’s the over-50s, it’s those who’ve got health conditions and to some extent also healthcare workers and so those are the priority groups.

We are in a situation at the moment where there are many unvaccinated people in the world but not enough doses for everyone yet. But there are many unvaccinated people in the world, whilst people whose risk is extremely low are being vaccinated, including children, who have near-to-zero the risk of severe disease or death.

That inequity is absolutely plain to see at this moment in a very troubling way as we see the images from South Asia on our televisions of the awful circumstances now - colleagues that are just facing the most appalling circumstances, they’re not working in a situation where there’s an NHS to support them.

And it feels completely wrong to be in a situation morally where we were allowing that to happen, whilst in many countries vaccines are being rolled out to younger and younger populations at very, very low risk.

Pollard also said that not having vaccine equity around the world was also a risk to health security, adding: “If we have better distribution of vaccines, there is some downward pressure on variants of concern.”

As PA Media reports, the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca has committed to providing their Covid-19 vaccine on a not-for-profit basis for the duration of the pandemic across the world, and in perpetuity to low and middle-income countries.

Updated

Staff from the Scottish Ambulance Service running a Covid mobile testing unit today from a car park in the Pollokshields area of Glasgow.
Staff from the Scottish Ambulance Service running a Covid mobile testing unit today from a car park in the Pollokshields area of Glasgow. Photograph: Andrew Milligan/PA

Cummings says public inquiry into Covid likely to protect 'broken system'

Dominic Cummings, Boris Johnson’s former chief adviser, made a series of criticisms of the government’s Covid policy in a thread on Twitter yesterday. Today he has expanded it, taking a fresh swipe at the Department of Health (repeating a line he first rehearsed in evidence to the Commons science committee in March) and arguing that the government should have started testing vaccines with human challenge trials (trials that involve exposing volunteers to the virus) more quickly.

But his main point is that Covid decision-making would have been better if it had been more open, and more subject to public scrutiny.

Any good liberal would probably agree. But, not for the first time, Cummings may be making an argument hard to square with his own record in government. As the PM’s chief adviser, Cummings was someone who aggressively protected government confidentiality.

In his thread today Cummings also suggests the public inquiry into the pandemic announced last week may turn out to be a waste of time.

Cummings is giving evidence to a Commons committee hearing next week about the government’s handling of Covid and in the Evening Standard Joe Murphy has a good article trying to assess how damaging his evidence might be. Here is Murphy’s conclusion.

Here’s the nub: As Cummings tweeted, any inquiry into the Covid tragedy will probably focus on “surface errors” rather than what he calls “the deep institutional wiring of the parties/civil service program destructive behaviour”. No, I don’t really know what that means either.

He may be able to explain it to MPs and the public when he gives evidence next week. But he may not, in which case the big Cummings bombshell could turn out to be a damp squib after all.

Dominic Cummings.
Dominic Cummings. Photograph: Vickie Flores/EPA

Updated

A nurse who cared for Boris Johnson when he was gravely ill with Covid-19 says she has handed in her resignation, such is her disillusionment with the “lack of respect” shown by the government for the NHS and healthcare workers.

Jenny McGee, who kept vigil by the prime minister’s bedside for two days when he was in intensive care, also revealed that his staff had later attempted to co-opt her into a “clap for the NHS” photo opportunity with him during what she thought would be a discreet thank you visit to Downing Street.

“We’re not getting the respect and now pay that we deserve. I’m just sick of it. So I’ve handed in my resignation,” said McGee, referring to the government’s proposed 1% pay rise for NHS staff, which unions have described as a “kick in the teeth”.

My colleague Ben Quinn has the whole story here:

There are few signs so far that the B.1.617.2 Covid variant is having much impact on school attendance in England, based on the latest figures from the Department for Education.

The data from last Wednesday for state schools show that the rates of absence were little changed from the week before, with the number of pupils off with confirmed Covid-19 cases stable at around 3,000. Including those self-isolating because of contact with suspected cases, 85,000 children were off school for what the DfE calls Covid-related reasons, very similar to the previous week.

Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said it was good news that more pupils weren’t having their education interrupted. But Barton warned:

In the longer term, we are going to need a plan to minimise the potential for educational disruption caused by the emergence of new variants.

Not only are there currently no plans to provide vaccines to pupils, or to prioritise vaccines for currently unvaccinated staff, but the existing Covid protocols mean that every positive case results in a wider group of close contacts having to self-isolate.

The potential for ongoing educational disruption is obvious and this will need to be tackled in order to ensure that stability is maintained in the future.

No 10 rejects Dominic Cummings's criticism of government's border policy

Here are some of the main points from the Downing Street lobby briefing.

  • The prime minister’s spokesman confirmed that local lockdowns were now being considered again as a possible option for the future. “We are not ruling out those sort of measures at this stage whilst we are still looking at the data coming in,” he said.
  • The spokesman stressed that, although travelling to amber list countries was allowed, it was only permitted for a limited number of reasons. He said:

There may be essential reasons for which people still have to travel to amber list countries but of course strict quarantine and testing measures will apply.

There are some limited reasons why it might be acceptable to travel – for work purposes, protecting essential services or compassionate reasons such as a funeral or care of a family member but otherwise people should not be travelling to these countries.

  • The spokesman was unable to explain why Department of Health figures undermine what Matt Hancock told MPs yesterday about the justification for India not being added to the red list earlier. (See 12.11pm.)
  • The spokesman rejected the claim from Dominic Cummings, the former chief adviser to the PM, that the government’s border policy is a “joke”. The spokesman said the UK had “some of the strongest border measures in the world”. Cummings made the claim on Twitter yesterday, and today he has been posting more tweets widening his criticism of the government’s Covid policy. Asked about some of these claims, the spokesman said different people had different views as to what the government did. The spokesman also refused to comment on a threat by Cummings to publish what he describes as “crucial historical document” about Covid decision-making.

Updated

In his interview Boris Johnson said he was taking a very close look at what the data from places like Bolton is saying about the threat posed by the variant first detected in India. (See 1.13pm.)

If you want to know what sort of data he will be looking at, you should take a look at the latest Twitter thread from John Burn-Murdoch, the FT’s data specialist. It starts here.

Burn-Murdoch is more sanguine than many commentators. He says there is some evidence to suggest that the Covid spikes that appear to suggest the India variant is much more transmissible than the UK variant might in fact be explained by other factors (clusters of new cases linked to travel, spreading in areas where there was little Covid originally). But he stresses we can’t be sure yet.

Updated

As is usual in politics, the PM’s words can be interpreted in different ways.

ITV’s Romilly Weeks thinks he sounds relatively optimistic.

But Sky’s Beth Rigby, comparing what the PM said today with what he said last week, conveys a different impression.

(I’m with Rigby. The Weeks tweet omits the rather crucial “at the moment” from the PM’s quote.)

Updated

Johnson says people should not go on holiday to amber list countries

Here are some more quotes from the Boris Johnson interview this morning.

  • Johnson said people should not be going on holiday to countries on the amber list. Asked about the amber list destinations, he said:

It is not somewhere you should be going on holiday, let me be very clear about that.

If people do go to an amber list country - if they absolutely have to for some pressing family or urgent business reason - if they have to go to an amber list country, then please bear in mind that you will have to self isolate, you will have to take tests and do a passenger locator form and all the rest of it but you’ll also have to self isolate for 10 days when you get back and that period of self-isolation, that period of quarantine, will be enforced with fines of up to £10,000.

So I think it’s important for people to understand what an amber list country is.

  • He rejected claims that the government was slow to put India on the red list. He said:

If you look at what happened with the variant we are talking about, the so-called Indian variant, the B.1.617.2, India was put on the red list before this was even a variant under investigation, let alone a variant of concern.

So we took prompt action and we will continue to take very, very draconian action in respect of all variants coming from wherever around the world.

  • He said the evidence did not justify changing policy now. He said:

Partly because we’ve built up such a wall of defences with the vaccination programme, I don’t see anything conclusive at the moment to say that we need to deviate from the roadmap.

But we’ve got to be cautious, and we’re keeping everything under very close observation. We’ll know a lot more in a few days’ time.

  • He said the government was closely monitoring the data relating to the Indian variant to assess the threat it posed. He said:

We’re keeping everything under very, very careful, close review. We’re looking at all the data as it comes in from places like Bolton, Blackburn, Bedford, Sefton and other places - just looking at those curves, where they’re moving, trying to understand whether the Indian variant is more transmissible, and, if so, by how much more it’s transmissible.

And also trying to understand to what extent our vaccine programme has already sufficiently fortified us all against it.

And I’m afraid we just got a few more days of looking at that data.

Updated

Johnson says government will have clearer idea of threat posed by Indian variant 'in a few days' time'

In his interview this morning Boris Johnson hinted that the government would have a better idea of the threat posed by the India variant of coronavirus by the end of the week.

He said the evidence did not justify changing policy now. He said:

I don’t see anything conclusive at the moment to say that we need to deviate from the road map.

But the government had to be “cautious”, he said. He went on:

We are looking at the epidemiology the whole time as it comes in and, at the moment, partly because we have built up such a wall of defences with the vaccination programme, I don’t see anything conclusive at the moment to say that we need to deviate from the road map.

But we’ve got to be cautious and we are keeping everything under very close observation.

We’ll know a lot more in a few days’ time.

As Sky’s Sam Coates says, this suggests that there could be an announcement about revising the timetable for step 4 - the lifting of all remaining lockdown restrictions in England, which had been scheduled for 21 June - well before 14 June, the date when the government was originally planning to announce whether it would go ahead.

Updated

Lord Frost, the Brexit minister, gave evidence to the Commons European scrutiny committee yesterday (my colleague Lisa O’Carroll wrote it up here) and he has got another parliamentary appearance this afternoon, at the Lords European affairs committee. Hopefully he will be asked about this report by RTE’s Europe editor, Tony Connelly, which says that the UK government is arguing that its legal obligations under the Northern Ireland protocol no longer apply because of “force majeure”.

The government has made the argument in a 20-page letter to the European Commission setting out its response to the legal action initiated by the EU over the government’s decision not to enforce parts of the protocol.

Connelly writes:

Force majeure is a legal concept through which a party can demand to be relieved of its contractual obligations because of circumstances beyond its control or which were unforeseen ...

The letter sets out a litany of factors which, the UK says, forced it to take unilateral action on how the protocol was being implemented ...

It is understood the letter makes a series of accusations against the European commission of failing to take account of unionist sensitivities in the application of the protocol, and of a refusal to be flexible in its approach.

It highlights the impact of parcels not being delivered, and of the impact of new requirements for people bringing pets - including guide dogs - from GB to Northern Ireland.

“This affects the principle…[that] the east-west dimensions are as important as, and indivisible from, the north-south context, the British-Irish [Good Friday] agreement, parity of esteem,” according to one extract.

The claim that the EU has not been sufficiently respectful of unionist sensitivities may be seen as especially brazen since it was Boris Johnson who agreed a deal that would effectively put a trade border down the Irish Sea, even though he personally told the DUP annual conference in 2018 that no British government could or should agree to a measure like that.

Updated

Boris Johnson has given an interview this morning on a visit to a vaccination centre, and Sky News has just broadcast an extract.

Johnson thanked people for coming forward to get vaccinated.

He says some people had been more vaccine hesitant than others. But the numbers were going up across all groups, he said. He said he would encourage everyone to get vaccinated.

Asked how he would respond to people who say unlocking should not be delayed because some people are not willing to get vaccinated, he said the government was continuing to monitor the data and that it would continue to keep people informed.

Boris Johnson on Sky News
Boris Johnson on Sky News. Photograph: Sky News

Updated

New government data undermines Hancock's explanation for why India added late to red list

In the Commons yesterday Matt Hancock, the health secretary, gave a detailed explanation for why India was not added to the travel red list at the same time as Pakistan and Bangladesh. He told MPs:

The truth is that when we put Pakistan and Bangladesh on the red list, positivity among those arriving from those countries was three times higher than it was among those arriving from India. That is why we took those decisions and, of course, they were taken before the Indian variant became a variant under investigation, let alone a variant of concern.

But Sky’s economics and data editor, Ed Conway, has been looking at the government’s own figures for the positivity rates for people arriving in the UK from those three countries in late March and early April, and they show that what Hancock said was wrong. People arriving from Pakistan were not three times as likely to test positive as people arriving from India. And people arriving from Bangladesh were actually less likely to test positive, he says.

Conway explains in his story:

In the period from 25 March to 7 April, some 5.1% of passengers coming to the UK from India tested positive for Covid-19, not far below the 6.2% level recorded by passengers from Pakistan, and comfortably higher than the 3.7% of passengers coming from Bangladesh.

This, remember, is for the period at the very beginning of April, two weeks before India was put on the red list.

And far from being three times higher than in India, the Covid positivity rate in Pakistan was only slightly above India; the rate of passengers coming from Bangladesh was considerably lower than that of those coming from India.

The Department of Health has not yet explained this discrepancy, but we may get some sort of response from the Downing Street lobby briefing.

Ed Conway presenting Covid positivity data for arrivals from Bangladesh, India and Pakistan
Ed Conway presenting Covid positivity data for arrivals from Bangladesh, India and Pakistan. Photograph: Sky News

Updated

Only 1.6% of deaths in England and Wales in early May involved Covid, ONS says

According to the latest weekly death figures for England and Wales published by the Office for National Statistics this morning, only 1.6% of deaths in the week ending 7 May (or 129 deaths out of 7,986) involved coronavirus. That was down from 2.1% the previous week.

The total number of deaths in the first week of May was also 19.7% below the five-year average for this time of year - although the ONS stresses that the total that week was affected by the May bank holiday, which would have meant fewer deaths being registered than normal because registry officers were closed.

Excess deaths in England and Wales
Excess deaths in England and Wales. Photograph: ONS

According to PA Media, the latest figures mean 152,919 deaths have now occurred in the UK where Covid-19 was mentioned on the death certificate. PA says the highest number of deaths to occur on a single day was 1,477 on 19 January. During the first wave of the virus, the daily death toll peaked at 1,461 deaths on 8 April 2020.

Updated

In the Commons yesterday Matt Hancock, the health secretary, expressed concern about people not getting the vaccine. He said that the majority of the people in hospital in Bolton, where the Indian variant has triggered a Covid surge, had been eligible for the vaccine but had not had it.

This morning Zubaida Haque, the former deputy director of the Runnymede Trust, a race equality thinktank, and a member of Independent Sage, the independent expert group that makes Covid policy recommendations, claimed vaccine hesitancy was being used as a “red herring” by the government. She told Good Morning Britain:

The health secretary has suggested that this is about vaccine hesitancy, but at the moment his conclusion seems to be based on hospitalisations in Bolton of 18 people, of which a third have been vaccinated.

Now he’s suggesting that of the 11 or 12 they didn’t have their vaccine when they were offered, but we don’t know why they didn’t take up their vaccine - it may have been medical reasons, it may have been other reasons.

This whole notion that, that at the moment, everyone’s freedom is threatened because of vaccine hesitancy groups, is absolute nonsense.

The main threat at the moment is this variant is highly transmissible - it’s 50% more transmissible than the Kent variant - and it is rapidly spreading across the country.

Haque said people should get vaccinated. But she said that it would take another two months before all adults were vaccinated, that the government had to set the right policy now, and that this week’s easing of lockdown restrictions should have been delayed.

She also said that it was a mistake to blame people for vaccine hesitancy. She said:

With vaccine hesitancy, there are a wide variety of reasons that people are hesitant and nervous about taking up the vaccine.

The research has shown that it is about anxieties and concerns ranging from side effects, to whether the vaccine will work, to whether it will affect fertility, to people having underlying illnesses and wondering whether it will affect them. And then, of course, there are issues with some communities about long-term distrust.

The most important thing with vaccine hesitancy is not to blame, it’s not to stigmatise, is not to point the finger, but to ask those communities: What are their concerns? And help them to take up the vaccine.

Updated

Eustice refuses to deny cabinet split over whether Australian trade deal should protect UK farmers

In his morning interviews George Eustice, the environment secretary, confirmed that a return to local lockdowns might be needed if the Covid situation deteriorates. (See 9.16am.) Here are some of the other points he made.

  • Eustice stressed the need for people to get vaccinated. He said:

We will only be able to exit this pandemic when the vast majority of people have had the vaccine.

  • He rejected claims that the government was slow to put India on the red list. He said:

What we did is put India on the red list a full six days before that variant was even under investigation and a full two weeks before it was declared a variant of concern.

We did put India on the list as soon as we saw an uptick in prevalence and well before the Indian variant was declared a variant of concern.

  • He rejected claims that logistical problems with the vaccine rollout were contributing to low take-up in some areas. Asked about the comments from the Labour MP Yasmin Qureshi, who argued that access difficulties rather than vaccine hesitancy amongst black, Asian or minority ethnic people explained low take-up in parts of Bolton (see 9.57am), Eustice replied:

The feedback that I have had right across the country has been universally positive about the way people locally have delivered this.

But it is the case that in some communities there’s been a bit more hesitancy. A lot of work has been done in particular to get BAME communities to engage and to have the vaccine.

We just need to keep pushing on that work.

  • He did not deny a Financial Times report (paywall) saying he is involved in a dispute with Liz Truss, the international trade secretary, over the terms of a trade deal with Australia. In their story Peter Foster and George Parker say Truss wants the deal to give Australian farmers tariff-free access to the UK market, but Eustice fears the damage this will do to British farming. The FT quotes one “insider opposed to the deal” as saying: “Basically we’re talking about signing off the slow death of British farming so Liz Truss can score a quick political point”. Eustice said that he had “very good discussions” with all cabinet colleagues on all issues, but that he would not comment in detail on the FT report. But he also stressed there was a “balance to be struck” in trade deals. He said:

We think there’s great opportunities, we’re very keen for instance to pursue trade agreements with Australia and also with the United States and with other countries as well.

But always in any trade agreement, yes there’s a balance to be struck between your commercial interests and your desire to open up free markets.

The FT says that ultimately the issue will have to be decided by Boris Johnson - and that neither the Truss camp nor the Eustice camp know which side he favours.

George Eustice on ITV’s Good Morning Britain this morning.
George Eustice on ITV’s Good Morning Britain this morning. Photograph: ITV/Rex/Shutterstock

Updated

Bedford's public health director says it's 'striking ... just how transmissible' Indian variant is

Bedford’s director of public health, Vicky Head, said this morning she was “really worried” about the local increase in Covid-19 cases linked to the Indian variant. Bedford has the second-highest rate of coronavirus in England, with 214 new cases recorded in the seven days to 13 May, and Head told BBC Breakfast this morning that the problem had escalated very quickly. She said:

What we know is what we’ve been seeing locally, which is a really massive rise in cases. About three or four weeks ago we were having three or four cases a day. We are now up to 10 times that.

What we think now is that pretty much all of our cases are likely to be the variant from India.

Head also said it was important for people to understand how transmissible the Indian variant was.

One of the really striking things about the variant is just how transmissible it is. If someone goes to school and tests positive, we are then seeing their whole family test positive.

But Head also said that she was “confident” that the vaccines were still effective against the Indian variant because most of the new cases in the town were in people aged under 40. “We have seen a small uptick in our inpatient numbers at the hospital, but nothing that makes me feel like we are not seeing a vaccine that is effective,” she said.

As PA Media reports, Bedford’s Covid rate jumped from 61.2 cases in the week up to 6 May to 123.5 per 100,000 people in the seven days to 13 May. It is only behind Bolton in Greater Manchester, which continues to have the highest rate in England, with 811 new cases recorded in the seven days to 13 May. The figures have been calculated by PA news based on Public Health England data published on May 17 on the government’s coronavirus dashboard.

A Covid marshal on patrol in Bedford yesterday.
A Covid marshal on patrol in Bedford yesterday. Photograph: Joe Giddens/PA

Updated

In an interview with the Guardian Yasmin Qureshi, the Labour MP for Bolton South East, said that it was a mistake to assume that low vaccine take-up rates in parts of the town were all a result of vaccine hesitancy amongst BAME communities. She said:

Essentially people who had no access to their own transport were having to catch two, sometimes three buses, to get to a vaccination centre. I told them that we needed a centre closer because this could have resolved the issue of uptake … This wasn’t just BAME people, I have lots of white, working-class people in my constituency who were also struggling for access.

This morning Qureshi’s argument has been endorsed Prof Kevin Fenton, the London regional director for Public Health England. He told the Today programme:

We must not lay the blame of low uptake at the feet of any particular community.

The reasons why people do not get vaccinated vary. It has to do with trust. It may be to do with access, it may be the times at which the vaccine centres are open which don’t facilitate access, for example, to key workers.

Scaffolder Frank Greene drinking tea this morning at the Peterborough Cafe in Fulham, London, which has re-opened for indoor service under the lockdown easing for England that came into force yesterday.
Scaffolder Frank Greene drinking tea this morning at the Peterborough Cafe in Fulham, London, which has re-opened for indoor service under the lockdown easing for England that came into force yesterday.
 Photograph: Kevin Coombs/Reuters

UK unemployment drops as businesses hire amid Covid easing

UK employers preparing for the easing of lockdown started hiring again in March, driving down unemployment for a third consecutive month, according to official figures. My colleague Richard Partington has the story here.

Minister confirms return to local lockdowns an option if Indian variant situation deteriorates

Good morning. As we report in our overnight splash, there are concerns that the Covid variant first detected in India is set to be the dominant strain in the UK within days. Some experts think it was a mistake for Boris Johnson to go ahead with the easing of lockdown restrictions implemented yesterday, and there is increasing doubt about whether the further lifting of lockdown measures will be able to go ahead as planned next month.

George Eustice, the environment secretary, was speaking for the government on the morning news programmes, and he confirmed that local lockdowns might be needed if the situation were to deteriorate in some areas. He told Times Radio:

We’ve made the latest set of easements yesterday. We’ll assess in a few weeks’ time, whether we can go further on 21 June. But I would just say that you know we can’t rule anything out, obviously, and the prime minister made that clear over the weekend.

If we do have a deterioration in some of these areas, then of course we can’t rule out that we would put in place certain local lockdowns. So at the moment we’re doing a lot of intensive surveillance in those areas with surge testing to identify it and deal with it.

Last week Boris Johnson did not deny that a return to local lockdowns might be an option, but Eustice’s comment suggests the idea might be creeping up the agenda. The Times has splashed on a story (paywall) saying that “officials have drawn up plans [for local lockdowns] modelled on the tier 4 restrictions introduced last year” and that “under the measures, people would be advised to stay at home and non-essential shops and hospitality would be closed if the new strain was not brought under control”.

Here is the agenda for the day.

9.30am: Boris Johnson chairs cabinet.

12pm: Downing Street is expected to hold its daily lobby briefing.

12.30pm: Penny Mordaunt, the Cabinet Office minister, responds to a Labour urgent question about enforcement of the ministerial code.

2pm: Alok Sharma, the Cop26 president, gives evidence to the Commons foreign affairs committee.

2pm: Nicola Sturgeon is due to be reconfirmed in the Scottish parliament as Scotland’s first minister.

4pm: Lord Frost, the Brexit minister, gives evidence to the Lords European affairs committee.

Also, Johnson is visiting a vaccination centre. And George Eustice, the environment secretary, is giving a speech on protecting peatlands and creating more woodlands.

Politics Live has been a mix of Covid and non-Covid news recently. Today I expect to be focusing mostly on Covid. For more Covid coverage, do read our global live blog.

I try to monitor the comments below the line (BTL) but it is impossible to read them all. If you have a direct question, do include “Andrew” in it somewhere and I’m more likely to find it. I do try to answer questions, and if they are of general interest, I will post the question and reply above the line (ATL), although I can’t promise to do this for everyone.

If you want to attract my attention quickly, it is probably better to use Twitter. I’m on @AndrewSparrow.

Updated

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