That’s it from us for today. Thanks for following along. You can read the full story on the government’s net zero strategy here:
Summary
• The UK government has set out its long-awaited strategy for reaching net zero emissions, with a plan ministers said would create up to 440,000 jobs and “unlock” £90bn in investment in the next decade, most of it from private sector companies.
But experts and campaigners said the proposals did not go far enough and were under-funded, while the government would continue to support fossil fuels.
The plan involves an expansion of electric vehicles, including increasing the network of charging points, and further growth of offshore wind, as well as investments in new technologies such as hydrogen and sustainable aviation fuel and £120m towards at least one new nuclear power station.
• The UK government has announced plans to launch a £400m package of investment alongside the US billionaire Bill Gates to boost the development of new green technologies.
Boris Johnson said the deal would help power a “green industrial revolution” and develop emerging technologies that were currently too expensive to be commercially successful but were essential to hitting the government’s climate goals.
Speaking at a Global Investment Summit at the Science Museum in London on Tuesday, the prime minister said the partnership would help develop UK technology related to carbon capture and storage, long-term battery life, jet zero (zero-carbon aviation) and green hydrogen technology.
• Victims of the Troubles have received backing from political parties in Westminster as they continue their campaign against a proposed ban on future prosecutions related to the conflict.
In July, the Government announced plans for a statute of limitations that would end all prosecutions for Troubles incidents up to April 1998, but a range of parties have now signed a pledge rejecting these proposals.
Military veterans as well as ex-paramilitaries would be protected from prosecution under the measure.
The proposals would also end all legacy inquests and civil actions related to the conflict.
• Downing Street has confirmed that vaccine appointments for children will be bookable within weeks, as Boris Johnson said the UK still faced a “difficult winter” due to Covid and flu putting pressure on the NHS.
After the latest daily number of new infections climbed to nearly 50,000, the prime minister’s spokesperson echoed concerns from the NHS England chief executive, Amanda Pritchard, that people needed to be reminded the virus was still circulating, to drive up vaccination rates even further.
• Carrie Johnson needed her friend in her “childcare bubble” with Boris Johnson for extra support over Christmas because of the challenges of running the country and experiencing difficult pregnancies, a cabinet minister has claimed.
It has been revealed that the Johnsons’ friend Nimco Ali, godmother to their son Wilfred, spent Christmas with the family at a time when lockdown restrictions in London prevented almost all household mixing.
• Northern Ireland’s Public Prosecution Service has defended the decision to prosecute army veteran Dennis Hutchings over a Troubles shooting.
The death of Hutchings from Covid-19 on Monday has reopened the controversy over legacy prosecutions that the government is proposing to end with new legislation.
Hutchings, from Cawsand in Cornwall, denied the charges and had said he wanted to clear his name.
Hutchings’ lawyer has said the proceedings contributed to his death.
UK reports highest number of Covid-19 deaths for seven months
The UK has reported its highest number of Covid deaths for seven months, with 223 deaths recorded within 28 days of a positive test for the virus.
The daily death rate, which has not been as high since 9 March, brought the weekly toll to 911, a near-15% rise on the week.
A further 43,738 coronavirus cases were reported, down slightly on Monday’s figure, though daily hospitalisations continued to rise, reaching 921, up 10% on the week.
After a bumpy September, confirmed cases have risen steadily in October with Covid rates soaring among largely unvaccinated secondary school school children, and infections spilling over into older, more vulnerable age groups.
The spread of infections beyond younger people has driven up cases in those aged 50 and over, a trend that has started to push up hospitalisations and death rates.
Updated
Facebook must “publish what they know” about the harm its platforms cause to children, the health secretary has demanded.
Sajid Javid told MPs he was “astonished” to learn that an internal study by the tech giant found 17% of teenage girls said Instagram, owned by Facebook, made their eating disorders worse.
He criticised the social media company for not sharing the study with parents, healthcare professionals and politicians, adding that it must “do the right thing” and publish information it holds.
Facebook responded by saying it published “two full research decks” in September, with annotations added to provide greater context to it.
Earlier this month, former Facebook data scientist Frances Haugen accused the business of being aware of apparent harm to some teenagers from Instagram and being dishonest in its public fight against hate and misinformation.
Haugen has come forward with a wide-ranging condemnation of Facebook, with tens of thousands of pages of internal research documents she secretly copied before leaving her job in the company’s civic integrity unit.
Facebook has said her allegations are misleading and claims there is no evidence to support the premise that it is the primary cause of social polarisation.
Updated
The Government’s net zero strategy announced today lacks the policies and investment needed to repair our broken natural world both on land and at sea, at the pace and scale required, according to the Wildlife Trusts.
The organisation, which is made up of 46 local Wildlife Trusts in the UK, said in a statement:
We need to make much more space for nature to recover – and increase it to at least 30% by 2030. Also, the government must embed climate action – mitigation and adaptation – across every department and take urgent steps to stop carbon-emitting activities such as new road building, peat burning and damaging the seabed, which are absent from the strategy.
What is more, the strategy relies on expensive innovation, built infrastructure, large-scale biomass crops and carbon capture and storage technologies that risk furthering the acute jeopardy facing our natural world.
In other reaction, the author and activist Paul Mason criticises the strategy for its reliance on carbon capture technologies:
UK govt Net Zero Strategy in one tragi-comic table: let industry, aviation, shipping and waste burn the planet until 2050 and balance it all out with technologies as yet undiscovered... pic.twitter.com/mVQeNSGIYF
— Paul Mason (@paulmasonnews) October 19, 2021
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Bin workers in Glasgow have confirmed that they will strike during the Cop26 climate conference, amid growing anxieties that the city’s summit arrangements are falling into chaos with threats of industrial action across services and transport.
Glasgow city council urged the workers to reconsider causing disruption during a “busy and difficult time”, as the GMB union confirmed a week-long strike from 1 November, the first full day of the UN conference.
With refuse, cleansing, school caretaker and catering roles affected, the local government body Cosla said it would “continue with constructive negotiations”. But transport unions have pledged similar walkouts, adding to the risk of global embarrassment as the world’s attention is focused on Glasgow in less than two weeks’ time.
The RMT confirmed last week that members who work for ScotRail and Caledonian Sleeper will stage industrial action for the duration of Cop26, which is expected to attract thousands of visitors to Glasgow, as the result of a pay dispute that has caused disruption to Sunday services for months.
Yesterday we handed in our legal strike notice.
— Glasgow GMB (@GMBGlasgowCC) October 19, 2021
From the 1st of November, for 8 days, Glasgow’s waste workers will be taking Industrial Action during #COP26
We all want a clean, green, sustainable City, and it starts with a fair pay deal for Key Workers at the bottom. pic.twitter.com/tu9WsSsjBK
The British government may have painted itself into a corner from which it cannot escape when it comes to its standoff with the EU over the Northern Ireland protocol, writes the the constitutional law expert, George Peretz QC, in a piece for Open Democracy.
David Frost, the UK’s Brexit minister, warned last week there was a big gap between the EU and the UK negotiating positions as he entered talks with the European Commission over changes to the arrangements for trade between Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
Without an agreed solution soon, he told the Conservative party conference earlier this month, the UK will need to act, using the article 16 safeguard mechanism, “to address the impact the protocol is having on Northern Ireland”.
Article 16 is an emergency brake in the Irish protocol, the agreement that left Northern Ireland in the EU’s single market and customs union to make Johnson’s Brexit model compatible with avoiding a hard border on the island of Ireland.
Peretz writes that article 16 is not the “get out of jail free” card that it is frequently said to be, adding:
Article 16 is not a ‘rewrite the protocol as you feel like’ provision. Rather, it allows either side to take ‘appropriate’ measures, restricted in scope and duration to what is ‘strictly necessary’, to address ‘serious economic, societal or environmental difficulties that are likely to persist’ or ‘diversion of trade’.
He concludes”
The government, therefore, has little choice but to chase down the extent to which the commission’s proposals will resolve the current difficulties. It is only when it can mount a plausible case that these proposals cannot realistically be expected to resolve these difficulties that it could lawfully use article 16.
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There is almost a universal reject at Westminster of what is effectively a “de facto amnesty” under government plans to prevent future Troubles-related prosecutions, the Alliance party MP Stephen Farry has said, after families who lost loved ones went to parliament earlier today (See post at 14.26).
He told the PA news agency.
It is important that all parties in Westminster do stand in solidarity with victims, the victims that were represented here today but also the many thousands elsewhere across these islands whose voices haven’t been heard as well.
There is almost universal rejection of what is a de facto amnesty that has been proposed by the UK government, and that simply can’t be allowed to stand. That will set the legacy process back many, many, many decades, essentially eliminate the hope for many people.
Sinn Féin MP Michelle Gildernew was among those supporting the campaign opposing a proposed ban on future prosecutions related to the conflict.
She told PA:
It was very heartening to hear all the parties today in a consensus that this legislation and Boris Johnson’s proposals are absolutely wrong and should never ever go through.
It really is shameful that this Conservative government are trying to deny the victims of violence the truth and justice and (knowing) what actually happened to their loved ones.
Updated
Police had to step in earlier to form a circle around Michael Gove, the secretary of state for levelling up, housing and communities, after anti-vaccine protesters spotted him on the street in London.
Noting that the incident comes at a particularly concerning time for MPs’ security, Paul Brand of ITV News retweeted footage from another account of the moment the protesters spotted Gove.
Following what happened to Sir David Amess on Friday, this is particularly concerning. https://t.co/2OP5Kw9E2D
— Paul Brand (@PaulBrandITV) October 19, 2021
Shayan Sardarizadeh, who investigates online disinformation for the BBC, tweeted that the protesters appeared to have come from a group calling itself Official Voice, who had turned up outside the office of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in London.
Jim Pickard of the FT tweets footage from another angle here
what’s most sinister about this is that he has no way of knowing whether they are harmless wingnuts or pose an actual physical danger pic.twitter.com/0DuIP9Cuv8
— Jim Pickard (@PickardJE) October 19, 2021
Updated
Downing Street has confirmed that vaccine appointments for children will be bookable within weeks, as Boris Johnson said the UK still faced a “difficult winter” due to Covid and flu putting pressure on the NHS.
After the latest daily number of new infections climbed to nearly 50,000, the prime minister’s spokesperson echoed concerns from the NHS England chief executive, Amanda Pritchard, that people needed to be reminded the virus was still circulating, to drive up vaccination rates even further.
“I think we absolutely want to get that message out,” the spokesperson said on Tuesday, adding that there was no reason yet for the government to dust off its “plan B” of winter measures for England because hospitalisations and deaths remained “broadly flat”.
He defended the rollout of jabs for 12- to 15-year-olds, which has been accused of progressing too slowly, and confirmed that the programme would be extended beyond schools. Doses will be able to be administered at vaccination sites, and parents and guardians of eligible children will receive a text or letter shortly inviting them to use the national booking service or ring 119 to book an appointment.
After a cabinet meeting held at the Science Museum on Tuesday, Johnson’s spokesperson said: “The prime minister stressed that our autumn and winter plan continues to keep the virus under control and that case rates and hospital admissions remain broadly flat.”
Updated
Carrie Johnson needed her friend in her “childcare bubble” with Boris Johnson for extra support over Christmas because of the challenges of running the country and experiencing difficult pregnancies, a cabinet minister has claimed.
It has been revealed that the Johnsons’ friend Nimco Ali, godmother to their son Wilfred, spent Christmas with the family at a time when lockdown restrictions in London prevented almost all household mixing.
On Tuesday the international trade secretary, Anne-Marie Trevelyan, hinted that the family had needed extra support at that time. Johnson, who is now expecting her second child, revealed she had a miscarriage at the start of this year, meaning she is likely to have been pregnant over the festive period.
Wilfred was eight months old at the time and No 10 has said Ali was part of their childcare bubble, which allowed some limited mixing.
Pressed on whether a family would have needed additional childcare over Christmas, Trevelyan said: “It’s hard enough for the rest of us; when you’re having to run a country as well and have the challenges of difficult pregnancies, having a supportive friend to be there in your bubble is absolutely the right thing to do.”
The claims first emerged in a report in Harper’s magazine that said Ali “spent Christmas with the couple at No 10 despite pandemic restrictions on holiday gatherings”.
Updated
Reading through the prime minister’s foreword in the government’s net zero strategy and there are a couple of eye-catching lines that have a particularly Johnsonian feel.
In particular, there’s the promise that the strategy can be achieved without giving up flying abroad or driving cars:
For years, going green was inextricably bound up with a sense that we have to sacrifice the things we love.
But this strategy shows how we can build back greener without so much as a hair shirt in sight.
In 2050, we will still be driving cars, flying planes and heating our homes, but our cars will be electric gliding silently around our cities, our planes will be zero emission allowing us to fly guilt-free, and our homes will be heated by cheap reliable power drawn from the winds of the North Sea.
Updated
A campaign against the British government’s proposed ban on future prosecutions related to the conflict is being stepped up by families who lost loved ones during the Troubles.
Raymond McCord, whose son was murdered by loyalist paramilitaries in north Belfast in 1997, said a meeting held in the Houses of Parliament on Wednesday “couldn’t have went better”.
He told PA Media: “There was no way it could have went better. Total support from every political party at Westminster except the Tories.”
Describing the meeting, McCord, who was joined by other bereaved campaigners, said: “Each victim spoke about the murder of their family member or family members.”
He said the nine people who travelled to Westminster to meet MPs had lost 15 family members between them.
McCord referenced the murder of MP Sir David Amess, saying: “We all sympathise with the family, but there’s no way Boris Johnson would take a gamble and insult that family the way he’s insulted our families by saying we’re going to let the terrorists walk free.”
All criminal prosecutions relating to the Troubles and future attempts to take civil actions would be blocked under the government plans that have united Northern Ireland’s parties in opposition.
The proposals, which are also opposed by the Irish government, were announced in July by Brandon Lewis, the Northern Ireland secretary, who told MPs it was a “painful truth” that criminal investigations were unlikely to deliver successful outcomes.
Updated
As well as criticism from the opposition and green campaigners, there was also this mixed view of the government’s strategy from Myles Allen, a professor of geosystem science at the University of Oxford, who told the Guardian’s environment correspondent, Fiona Harvey:
We have to stop fossil fuels from causing global warming before the world stops using fossil fuels.
Finally, the government seems to be acknowledging this obvious fact and belatedly investing in safe and permanent disposal of carbon dioxide so we can stop dumping it into the atmosphere.
Depressingly, however, they still assume it can be done by subsidising carbon capture and a reformed emission trading system.
It won’t: taxpayers’ money won’t last forever and by the time emission permits become expensive enough to make carbon capture worthwhile, it’ll be too little, too late. We have to make safe carbon dioxide disposal a licensing requirement for the continued extraction and import of fossil fuels.
He added that “outsiders” with as diverse views as the Onward thinktank and the all-party parliamentary group on net zero understand this. “It’s a shame the civil service just don’t want to know.”
Updated
Today’s new heat and buildings strategy suggests that while the PM is very keen on the green agenda, he doesn’t want to deter the public with coercion, writes the i’s chief political commentator, Paul Waugh,
In a snap verdict on today’s strategy papers from the government, he writes that it is why there is only a “target” for phasing out gas boilers, not a legal requirement on consumers. He adds:
In fact, it’s business that is really in the firing line once more.
The most striking feature of today’s raft of new announcements of a net zero strategy and other measures (unveiled by energy minister Greg Hands) was that the government will mandate the car industry to sell required numbers of wholly electric models per year.
Updated
The Treasury has published its own net zero review, alongside the strategy published by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, which says “the costs of global inaction significantly outweigh the costs of action” to tackle the climate crisis.
But it adds “as with all economic transitions, ultimately the costs and benefits of the transition will pass through to households through the labour market, prices and asset values”.
The review says it was not possible to forecast how individual household finances would be hit over the course of a 30-year transition to net zero greenhouse gas emissions.
But the Treasury review did highlight the impact on the public finances:
There will be demands on public spending, but the biggest impact comes from the erosion of tax revenues from fossil fuel-related activity.
Governments “may need to consider changes to existing taxes and new sources of revenue” rather than relying on increased borrowing, the review says.
Updated
Responding to the net zero announcement in the House of Commons, the shadow energy secretary, Ed Miliband, said:
The plan falls short on delivery, and while there is modest short-term investment, there is nothing like the commitment we believe is required. And we know why.
Miliband quoted reports from the weekend that a source in the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy said the Treasury was emphasising the short-term risks rather than long-term needs. He continued:
The chancellor’s fingerprints are all over these documents and not in a good way. So we’ve waited months for the heat and buildings strategy – it is a massive letdown.
Miliband questioned if the plan would meet the goals set in the sixth carbon budget for 2035. He added:
Isn’t the truth that despite hundreds of pages of plans, strategies and hot air, there is a still a chasm with this government between the rhetoric and the reality? My fear is this plan will not deliver the fair, prosperous transition we need equal to the scale of the emergency we face.
Updated
The energy minister, Greg Hands, has told the House of Commons that switching to cleaner sources of energy will reduce Britain’s reliance on fossil fuels and will “bring down costs down the line”.
He told MPs:
This plan is our best route, overcoming current challenges as well. The current price spikes in gas show the need to rapidly reduce our reliance on volatile imported fossil fuels.
Detailing the government’s strategy to phase out fossil fuels over the next 30 years and the net zero strategy, Hands said:
We are now setting up the Industrial Decarbonisation and Hydrogen Revenue Support Scheme to fund these business models and enable the first commercial-scale deployment of low carbon hydrogen production and industrial carbon capture.
He went on:
We will be a global leader in developing and deploying the green technologies of the future. The strategy announces a £1.5bn fund to support net zero innovation projects, which provides funding for low carbon technologies across the areas of the Prime Minister’s 10-point plan.
Hands said the government had published its Heat and Building Strategy that sets out plans to significantly cut carbon emissions from the UK’s 30m homes and workplaces, through measures such as grants of up to £5000 towards the cost of heat pumps.
Updated
Greg Hands, the minister of state at the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy, has been making a statement in the House of Commons, unveiling the Government’s net zero strategy. Here are some highlights from his opening remarks:
This is not just an environmental transition, it represents an important economic change too.
He added:
We will fully embrace this new green industrial revolution helping the UK to level up as we build back better and get to the front of the global race to go green.
We need to capitalise on this to ensure British industries and workers benefit. I can therefore announce that the strategy will support up to 440,000 jobs across sectors and across all parts of the UK in 2030.
The minister continued:
There’ll be more specialists in low carbon fuels in Northern Ireland and low carbon hydrogen in Sheffield.
Electric vehicle battery production in the north East of England, engineers in Wales, green finance in London and offshore wind technicians in Scotland.
This strategy will harness the power of the private sector, giving businesses and industry the certainty they need to invest and grow in the UK to make the UK home to new ambitious projects.
The policies and spending brought forward in the strategy along with regulations will leverage up to £90 billion of private investment by 2030 levelling up our former industrial heartlands.
And finally on greenhouse gas removals, the strategy pledges:
- New, highly skilled, jobs in our industrial heartlands.
- Start to mobilise additional public and private investment of around £20bn, in line with our 2037 delivery pathway.
- An ambition to deploy at least 5 MtCO2 (metric tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent) per year of engineered GGRs (green gas removals) by 2030.
Updated
On natural resources, the strategy pledges:
- New employment opportunities across the UK. Afforestation in England could support up to 1,900 jobs in 2024 and 2,000 jobs in 2030.
- Start to mobilise additional public and private investment of approximately £30bn, in line with our 2037 delivery pathway.
- Treble woodland creation rates in England, contributing to the UK’s overall target of increasing planting rates to 30,000 hectares a year by the end of this parliament.
Updated
On transport, the strategy pledges:
- Support for up to 22,000 jobs in 2024 and up to 74,000 jobs in 2030.
- Start to mobilise additional public and private investment of around £220bn, in line with our 2037 delivery pathway.
- Remove all road emissions at the tailpipe and kickstart zero emissions international travel.
Updated
On industry, the strategy pledges
• Economic hubs for green jobs in line with our ambition to capture 20-30 MtCO2 a year by 2030.
• “Future-proofing” for industrial sectors, and the communities they employ through a £315m Industrial Energy Transformation Fund (IETF), (£289m for England, Wales and Northern Ireland, £26m for Scotland).
• Incentives for cost-effective abatement in industry at a pace and scale which the government says is required to deliver net zero.
Updated
On fuel supply and hydrogen, the strategy pledges:
• Extra support for a Industrial Decarbonisation and Hydrogen Revenue Support (IDHRS) scheme to fund the UK’s new hydrogen and industrial carbon capture business models.
• The government will be providing up to £140m to establish the scheme, including up to £100m to award contracts of up to 250MW of electrolytic hydrogen production capacity in 2023 with further allocation in 2024.
• The introduction of a new climate compatibility checkpoint for future licensing on the UK Continental Shelf and regulating the oil and gas sector in a way that minimises greenhouse gases through the revised Oil and Gas Authority strategy
Updated
On power the government’s net zero strategy pledges:
• By 2035 it aims for the UK to powered entirely by clean electricity, subject to security of supply.
• There will be a final investment decision on a large-scale nuclear plant by the end of this Parliament, and the launch a new £120m Future Nuclear Enabling Fund, retaining options for future nuclear technologies, including Small Modular Reactors, with a number of potential sites including Wylfa in North Wales.
• There will be 40GW of offshore wind by 2030, with more onshore, solar, and other renewables – with a new approach to onshore and offshore electricity networks to incorporate new low carbon generation.
• A move towards 1GW of floating offshore wind by 2030 to put us at the forefront of this new technology that can utilise our North and Celtic Seas – backed by £380m overall funding for our world-leading offshore wind sector
• The deployment of new flexibility measures including storage to help smooth out future price spikes.
Updated
The government’s policy paper, Net Zero Strategy: Build Back Greener, has just gone online on the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy website.
Updated
Responding to the government’s net zero strategy announcement, Labour’s Ed Miliband said the plans fell disappointingly short on delivery and were nothing like what was required.
They were a a massive let-down, he said, adding that emissions from buildings were higher than in 2015.
The biggest single difference that could be made would be a street by street retrofit of housing. He criticised Hands for failing to even mention nuclear in his statement and asked for the government to say what its position on new nuclear was.
“The failure to invest does not just affect whether this transition is fair for consumers but also workers in existing industries. Take steel. it will cost £6bn for the steel industry to get to net zero in the next 15 years ... but there is nothing for steel in this document.”
The same was true of investment in new industries such as hydrogen. There was a global race in these industries and the UK was not powering ahead, he added.
Updated
UK net zero strategy to support 440,000 jobs in 2030, says minister
Decisive action is needed if Britain is to meet its net zero goals, MPs have been told by Greg Hands, the minister of state for business, energy and clean growth.
Speaking in the Commons chamber, he is laying out details of the government’s net zero strategy and the buildings strategy. The government aims to meet a target of net zero by 2050.
“It’s not just an environmental transition ... it represents an important industrial change too,” he said, adding that the strategy will support up to 440,000 jobs in 2030 across the UK.
We have a live feed of Hands’ presentation here ahead of the Cop26 summit in Glasgow.
This is not just an environmental transition, it represents an important economic change too.
We will fully embrace this new green industrial revolution helping the UK to level up as we build back better and get to the front of the global race to go green.
We need to capitalise on this to ensure British industries and workers benefit. I can therefore announce that the strategy will support up to 440,000 jobs across sectors and across all parts of the UK in 2030.
Updated
The former health secretary Matt Hancock has appeared on the government back benches during questions for his successor, Sajid Javid.
Congratulating Javid, he encouraged authorities to use pop-up vaccination centres such as one in a Brent mosque in north London to ensure people could get a Covid booster.
Updated
The Tory MP and former veterans minister Johnny Mercer has tweeted that he is “devastated by the death of my dear friend” after Dennis Hutchings, a military veteran who was being prosecuted over a Troubles shooting, died from Covid-19 on Monday.
Mercer, who accompanied Hutchings to court on several days of the trial, said he “remains fiercely proud of him”. Hutchings died at the Mater hospital on Monday while in Belfast for the trial.
— Johnny Mercer (@JohnnyMercerUK) October 19, 2021
Updated
Boris Johnson told his cabinet that he believes the Covid-19 plan is keeping the virus under control but reiterated that ministers “must put all our energies into our vaccination programmes”.
After ministers met in the Science Museum, the prime minister’s official spokesperson said:
The prime minister stressed that our autumn and winter plan continues to keep the virus under control and that case rates and hospital admissions remain broadly flat.
He re-emphasised that we must put all our energies into our vaccination programmes.
The spokesperson added that the government was keeping a close eye on a Covid-19 variant, AY4.2, but insisted there was no evidence it spreads more easily.
“There’s no evidence to suggest that this variant ... the AY4.2 one ... is more easily spread. There’s no evidence for that but as you would expect we’re monitoring it closely and won’t hesitate to take action if necessary,” they added.
Updated
Leicestershire police were guilty of a “serious and inexcusable failure” to properly investigate allegations of child sexual abuse against the late Labour peer, Lord Greville Janner, according to a damning report.
The investigation, by the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse (IICSA), into the handling of allegations against Janner, found that a failure by police to submit statements by two anonymised witnesses in 2002 to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) may have been the result of “complacency, incompetence or undue deference to a prominent public figure”. It criticises a “culture of disbelief” at Leicestershire police at the time.
The inquiry panel, led by the the IICSA chair, Prof Alexis Jay, said: “The police investigation in Operation Magnolia insufficiently investigated JA-A19 and JA-A6’s complaints.
“The police were too quick to dismiss JA-A19 as someone who lacked credibility, and put too little emphasis on looking for evidence that might support his allegations.
“JA-A6’s complaint was shut down without any proper investigations being carried out. The decision not to submit JA-A19 and JA-A6’s statements about Lord Janner to the CPS was a significant and unjustifiable failing.”
Updated
The family of John Pat Cunningham have responded following the death of army veteran Dennis Hutchings from Covid-19 on Monday.
Hutchings, who had denied killing 27-year-old Cunningham in 1974, was three days into his trial in Belfast when he contracted the virus. He had kidney disease and was on dialysis.
In a statement, the Cunningham family said they wished to acknowledge that this was a difficult time for the Hutchings family, adding they should be given time to grieve.
“When the time is judged appropriate, the family will respond in more detail to the issues surrounding the prosecution of Dennis Hutchings,” they said.
Serious questions need to be raised about the prosecution of the 80-year-old, the Democratic Unionist party said today.
Updated
Registered Covid-19 deaths fall again but case rates still rising
There is a “critical” need to speed up boosters and the vaccination of teenagers, a leading member of the UK government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) has warned.
Prof Neil Ferguson, an epidemiologist at Imperial College London, was speaking this morning as cases in the UK are at their highest level for almost three months, with the seven-day average standing at 44,145 cases per day.
Registered deaths involving Covid-19 in England and Wales have fallen for the second week in a row and by the largest proportion since May, according to new figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) today.
Some 666 deaths registered in the week ending 8 October mentioned the disease on the death certificate. This was down 15% – the largest week-on-week fall since the week ending 21 May, when the figure fell by 29%.
Nevertheless, case numbers and hospital admissions and deaths are rising, though vaccines are still working well overall to prevent severe disease.
Ferguson suggested this morning that teenagers should be given two doses of a jab to block infection and transmission.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Ferguson, whose data was instrumental to the UK going into lockdown in March 2020, said the UK had higher Covid cases than other countries for a number of reasons.
First of all, we have lower functional immunity in our population than most other western European countries and that’s for two reasons.
Partly, we were very successful in getting vaccination rolled out early and we know that gradually immunity wanes over time after you’ve had that second dose, so how early we were means we are a bit more vulnerable.
Second, we relied more on the AstraZeneca vaccine and, while that protects very well against very severe outcomes of Covid, it protects slightly less well than Pfizer against infection and transmission, particularly in the face of the Delta variant.
Hugo Gye, the political editor at the i and a tireless conveyor of Covid-19 statistics on Twitter, has an interesting thread in which he suggests the roll-out of booster jabs is not going too badly:
Lots of noise this morning about boosters. True that they are not going as quickly as they should, but it's not as bad as some are suggesting.
— Hugo Gye (@HugoGye) October 19, 2021
Last week there were 1,269,836 boosters administered in 🏴 - an average of 181,405 per day. The previous week it was 161,078 per day.
Updated
A man arrested on suspicion of sending a death threat to the Labour MP Chris Bryant has been released on bail.
The 76-year-old, from Pontycymer, Bridgend, was taken in for questioning after a report was made by the 59-year-old politician on 16 October.
Bryant told PA Media that he called police after receiving a death threat via email.
It happened soon after the Conservative MP, Sir David Amess, was stabbed to death at a constituency surgery in Essex.
A South Wales police spokeswoman said: “A 76-year-old man from Pontycymer, Bridgend, who was arrested on suspicion of malicious communications has been released on police bail.”
Updated
A cabinet minister has said she once received a threat to burn down her house with her children inside, as MPs’ safety comes under question following the killing of Sir David Amess.
The international trade secretary, Anne-Marie Trevelyan, told LBC Radio that an individual was arrested over the “ghastly” threat.
In the wake of the death of the Southend West MP in a suspected terror attack, politicians have been sharing some of the abuse they have been subjected to while in office. Trevelyan told the radio station:
The online trolling that I’ve had, I’ve had a certain amount, I’ve had to have someone arrested who was threatening to burn down my house when my children were in it.
These things are ghastly and entirely wrong, and our police forces work incredibly hard to support us as parliamentarians and to protect our families, but we are going to keep looking at that.
The MP for Berwick-upon-Tweed in Northumberland did not provide further details as to when the threat occurred or the outcome of the arrest.
The justice secretary, Dominic Raab, has spoken of having received at least three threats on “life and limb” in the past two years, with the latest being of an acid attack.
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Pupils to continue wearing face coverings in Scottish schools
The Scottish government has confirmed that secondary school pupils should continue to wear face coverings in school after the October half-term break.
Staff in primary and secondary schools will also still wear coverings in communal areas or when moving around school buildings.
The Scottish government said that while the chief medical officer has advised that there are encouraging signs, “a more cautious approach” would allow more time for 12- to 15-year-olds to take up vaccinations.
Confirming that school mitigations will remain in place, Scotland’s education secretary, Shirley-Anne Somerville, also urged continued vigilance to protect pupils and staff. She said:
In recent weeks we have seen the previous sharp decline in Covid-19 case numbers starting to level off, and that is why we have decided to adopt a cautious approach and maintain safety mitigations in school for the time-being.
Progress with vaccinating 12-15 year olds has been remarkable and is already over 40%. However, this was only rolled out a few weeks ago and allowing further time will mean that that encouraging figure rises even higher.
The decision is based on advice from senior clinicians and takes account of the most recent data, she added, and case rates would be monitored on a weekly basis, “with a view to lifting restrictions at earliest possible time.
Trade union representatives of teachers in Scotland have welcomed the decision.
The priority is to keep schools open but as safe as possible, so this delay from the Scottish Government, with regard to easing mitigations, is welcome https://t.co/Q5UiufYsUt
— EIS (@EISUnion) October 19, 2021
Children could be forced to wear masks in schools across England again as part of the government’s back-up plan if the country’s Covid situation deteriorates significantly, the UK government’s education secretary admitted earlier this month.
Nadhim Zahawi confirmed it was one of the contingencies the government had planned for, but signalled his opposition to reinstating “bubbles” that separated students into groups and enforced isolation if one person tested positive for coronavirus.
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Boris Johnson and the Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates have announced a £400m partnership to boost green investment to tackle the climate crisis.
This morning, the prime minister told the Global Investment Summit at the Science Museum in London that the government had committed £200m, withGates matching the figure.
In a subsequent statement, Gates said:
Our partnership with the United Kingdom will accelerate the deployment of these critical climate solutions, helping to make them more affordable and accessible.
In order to achieve net-zero emissions, we need to reduce the costs of clean technologies so they can compete with and replace the high-emitting products we use today – I call this difference in price the green premium.
Billed by Downing Street as “a move to drive investment into the next generation of ground-breaking clean energy technologies”, the partnership is between the UK government and Breakthrough Energy Catalyst, a project Gates launched earlier this year aimed at financing, producing and buying new solutions for a zero-carbon economy.
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Northern Ireland prosecutor defends prosecution of late soldier
Northern Ireland’s Public Prosecution Service has defended the decision to prosecute army veteran Dennis Hutchings over a Troubles shooting.
The death of Hutchings from Covid-19 on Monday has reopened the controversy over legacy prosecutions that the government is proposing to end with new legislation.
Hutchings, from Cawsand in Cornwall, denied the charges and had said he wanted to clear his name.
In the face of criticism, including from unionist politicians, Northern Ireland’s deputy director of public prosecutions, Michael Agnew, said the decision to prosecute Hutchings for attempted murder was taken after an impartial and independent application of the test for prosecution.
The test requires a consideration of whether the available evidence provides a reasonable prospect of conviction and, if it does, whether prosecution is in the public interest.
Whilst a review of a previous no prosecution decision does not require the existence of new evidence, the police investigation in this case resulted in a file being submitted to the PPS which included certain evidence not previously available.
In the course of proceedings, he added, there were rulings by high court judges that the evidence was sufficient to put Hutchings on trial and also that the proceedings were not an abuse of process.
Agnew said the PPS recognised the “concerns in some quarters” in relation to the decision to bring the prosecution. He added:
We would like to offer our deepest sympathies to the family and friends of Mr Hutchings, and acknowledge their painful loss.
However, where a charge is as serious as attempted murder, it will generally be in the public interest to prosecute.
Our thoughts are also with the family of John Pat Cunningham who have waited for many decades in the hope of seeing due process take its course.
Earlier this month, the former soldier’s lawyers said he had taken a case alleging a breach of the Human Rights Act to the European court of human rights in Strasbourg on the grounds that military veterans had been subjected to discriminatory treatment.
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A cross-party group of more than 137 parliamentarians, including 117 MPs, have called on parliament’s pension fund to disinvest from Chinese companies accused of complicity in gross human rights violations or institutions linked to the Chinese state.
The signatories included the late Conservative MP Sir David Amess, in one of his last political acts before his death on Friday.
Others include Lisa Nandy, the shadow foreign secretary, and the former Conservative cabinet ministers Liam Fox, Iain Duncan Smith and Norman Tebbit. It was also signed by, among others, the Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesperson, Layla Moran, and the shadow foreign affairs minister, Stephen Kinnock.
The letter to the fund’s trustees follows research by the rights group Hong Kong Watch which found the Parliamentary Contributory Pension Fund had £2.9m invested in the Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba and £900,000 in technology group Tencent, as well as investments in China Construction Bank and Sinopec, the chemical and oil firm.
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Shortage of lorry drivers 'not visibly getting better', MPs told
The Road Haulage Association (RHA) has told MPs that the shortage of lorry drivers and resultant disruption is “not visibly getting better” despite government measures aimed at alleviating the issue.
Duncan Buchanan, the RHA’s director of policy, told the business, energy and industrial strategy committee: “Things are very challenged at the moment.
“There are widespread shortages of lorry drivers, which are leading to delays and frustrated trips.
“Among our members we are still getting reports that this hasn’t eased at all.
“Things are not visibly getting better at this stage and I know there are a number of measures that have been put in place – stepping up training, stepping up tests – but on the ground that isn’t having much of an effect.”
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It is “imperative” that the aviation sector recovers from the coronavirus pandemic in 2022, according to the transport secretary, Grant Shapps.
The minister acknowledged that “Covid is far from over”, and stated that the presence of variants of the virus in a number of countries “remains a concern”.
But he insisted that “considerable progress” has been made this year, and described the recent relaxation of the UK’s travel rules as “a clear sign that we are well on the way to recovery”.
Speaking at the Airport Operators Association’s annual conference, Shapps said: “Global travel next year is predicted to grow significantly, coming after the worst two years on record. That will provide some welcome relief.”
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Government may ban gas boilers in future, minister says
Gas boilers could be banned in future but the government believes the market should drive changes to home heating systems, the cabinet minister Anne-Marie Trevelyan has said, amid criticism of the limited grants system for heat pumps.
Ministers had been under pressure to set a date to ban the installation of new gas boilers in existing homes, but on Tuesday announced the installation of low-carbon heat pumps would be encouraged with a grant system of £5,000 for up to 90,000 homes in England and Wales.
The grant would make the installation a similar cost to a new gas boiler, but green campaigners have said the move would expand the greener system to a minuscule proportion of homes and does not set a date for a full ban.
Speaking on Tuesday as the government launched its heat and buildings strategy, one of a number of announcements made ahead of the Cop26 summit in Glasgow, Trevelyan hinted the installation of new gas boilers would be banned in the future.
“In the short term, yes, of course this is a voluntary scheme … There will be a point at which that changes but, yes, for now that’s the case,” she told Sky News.
The international trade secretary said she believed the market would eventually change to make the greener switch more affordable. “At the moment we’re encouraging the market to drive those changes,” she told the BBC.
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Serious questions need to be raised about the prosecution of an 80-year-old army veteran over a fatal shooting during Northern Ireland’s troubles, the leader of the Democratic Unionist party has said, following the death of the former soldier from Covid on Monday evening.
Dennis Hutchings, who had denied killing 27-year-old John Pat Cunningham in 1974, was three days into his trial in Belfast when he contracted the virus. He had kidney disease and was on dialysis.
The DUP leader, Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, said: “There now stands serious questions around those who made the decision that Dennis should stand trial once more. He was honourable. He wanted to clear his name again but was dragged to a court and hounded until his death.
“This is a sad indictment on those who want to rewrite history but also demands serious questions of the Public Prosecution Service about how this trial was deemed to be in the public interest.”
Hutchings’ death has reopened the controversy over legacy prosecutions that the government is proposing to end with new legislation.
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British households will be £1,000 worse off next year from a cost of living squeeze created by rising energy prices and shortages of workers and supplies caused by Covid and Brexit, a leading thinktank has warned.
The Resolution Foundation said higher levels of inflation would weigh down workers’ earnings next year, contributing to a hit to the average household income in Britain at a time when the government is cutting benefits and raising taxes.
It said the average household disposable income, after adjusting for inflation, would be about 2% lower by the end of 2022 relative to forecasts made in March by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), before the surge in shop and energy bill prices.
Although the OBR had predicted that household disposable income would rise in 2022, the Resolution Foundation said soaring inflation would mean households would have £1,000 less than originally forecast.
“Higher inflation reduces the amount of goods and services that households are able to afford, eroding the real value of incomes,” it said.
While Boris Johnson has clearly been in his element this morning – presiding over promises for major projects and pledges to unleash the forces of the market – campaigners and the opposition have been warning that the initial announcements around the government’s green agenda lack ambition.
Labour condemned government plans for £5,000 grants to allow people to install home heat pumps and other low-carbon boiler replacements as part of a wider heat and buildings strategy as “more of Boris Johnson’s hot air”, without sufficient substance.
Details for the scheme, to be formally set out on Tuesday alongside the government’s net-zero strategy, include £450m committed towards grants to replace boilers, with a pledge that the fund will mean heat pumps should cost no more than boilers to install or run.
More widely, the heat and buildings strategy contains a commitment to funding totalling £3.9bn to decarbonise buildings and how they are heated, with a confirmed 2035 target for all new heating systems in UK homes to be energy-efficient.
With the crucial Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow starting in a fortnight, the business and energy secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng, said recent gas price rises “have highlighted the need to double down on our efforts to reduce Britain’s reliance on fossil fuels and move away from gas boilers over the coming decade”.
However, some environmental groups said more urgent action was needed. Caroline Jones, of Greenpeace UK, said efforts to decarbonise housing were being hampered by “unambitious policies and inadequate funding”.
She said: “More money must be provided to rapidly increase the number of homeowners switching to heat pumps over the next few years, with full costs covered for families on low incomes.”
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Johnson also told the Global Investment Summit the Covid-19 crisis showed how governments and the private sector must work together to tackle global problems – a lesson that should be applied to the fight against climate change.
The prime minister said:
I can deploy billions – with the approval of the Chancellor, obviously – but you in this room, you can deploy trillions.
He said there was $24tn (£17.4tn) represented in the room at the Science Museum summit in London.
I want to say to each and every one of those dollars, you are very welcome to the UK and you have come to the right place at the right time.
Setting out his agenda for a “green industrial revolution”, Johnson indicated that hydrogen technology would play a major role.
The government will set out its net zero strategy for greenhouse gas emissions later on Tuesday.
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Boris Johnson channels Gordon Gekko: green is good
Boris Johnson has said “the market is going green” as he urged investors to put their cash into British efforts to develop cleaner technology.
The prime minister, addressing the government’s Global Investment Summit, channelled the spirit of Michael Douglas’s character [below] from the film Wall Street as he told business chiefs:
To adapt Gordon Gekko – who may or may not be a hero of anybody in this room – green is good, green is right, green works.
“Green is good..”
— Ben Quinn (@BenQuinn75) October 19, 2021
Boris Johnson channels Gekko as unveils details of green ‘big bet’ https://t.co/bg6P25QPA4 pic.twitter.com/mtwmZo1wYn
Ahead of the Cop26 climate change summit, Johnson told the gathering in London’s Science Museum it “must be the moment when government joins hands with the private sector” and international organisations to create the drive the market for green technology.
We should be using this moment, collectively as governments, to leverage in the trillions of the market, creating the country platforms that will not only tackle climate change but deliver green jobs and green growth around the world.
Johnson also told the summit that the UK had a responsibility to lead the world in decarbonising because as the first nation to industrialise, “we were the first to knit the deadly tea cosy of C02 that is now driving climate change”.
Setting out the UK’s ambitions for hydrogen, Johnson said it was “part of the solution”.
To drive a digger or a truck or to hurl a massive passenger plane down a runway, you need what Jeremy Clarkson used to call ‘grunt’ - I think there may be a technical term for it - but ‘grunt’.
Hydrogen provides that grunt, so we are making big bets on hydrogen, we are making bets on solar and hydro, and, yes - of course - on nuclear as well, for our baseload.
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Good morning on a day when the the UK government is setting out details of what Boris Johnson has described in an interview as a “big bet” on wind power.
Johnson is also announcing £9.7bn of new overseas investment in the UK, creating 30,000 additional jobs, at a major business summit on Tuesday, Downing Street has said.
Ministers have meanwhile unveiled plans for £5,000 grants to allow people in England and Wales to install home heat pumps and other low-carbon boiler replacements as part of a wider heat and buildings strategy that some campaigners warned lacked sufficient ambition and funding.
Labour also condemned the plans as “more of Boris Johnson’s hot air”, without sufficient substance.
It’s expected to be a policy heavy day in which we’ll hear more about the government’s plans for new nuclear power plants, carbon capture technology and storage schemes, as well as new targets for manufacturers to produce electric cars.
Johnson said in an interview with Bloomberg:
We are making a big bet on wind power, on hydrogen, on electric vehicles, on gigafactories, on carbon capture and storage, all those things...
Obviously, the green bet comes in a shade of blue. Johnson added that the government would be setting out the regulatory framework “to encourage the private sector to come in, in the way that they are ...”
Here is just some of the agenda today:
• 9.35 am Boris Johnson speaks at a Global Investment Summit, alongside business leaders including Bill Gates.
• 10.15 am Cabinet to meet at the Science Museum.
• 10.45 am Industry bodies including the Road Haulage Association and British Chambers of Commerce give evidence to the Commons business, energy and industrial strategy committee on supply chain issues.
•11.30 am Troubles victims hold Westminster event calling for the rejection of UK government’s plan for a statute of limitations on future Troubles prosecutions.
•Noon Department for Education to publish latest pupil attendance figures.
•1.00 pm Institute for Government panel event to discuss the forthcoming spending review.
•1.30 pm Attorney general Suella Braverman to address the Public Law Project annual conference.
•2.45 pm DCMS minister Julia Lopez to give evidence to the Lords Communications and Digital Committee on the future of Channel 4.
Alongside this, Westminster is still reeling from the killing of the Conservative MP Sir David Amess, as he continues to be remembered, and a debate about the security and accessibility of MPs continues.
If you want to attract my attention quickly, it is probably better to use Twitter. I’m on @BenQuinn75.
Alternatively, you can email me at ben.quinn@theguardian.com
Our global coronavirus liveblog for the day is here:
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