Afternoon summary
The Local Government Association has welcomed the PM’s plans for “county deals”. (See 5.08pm.) This is from the LGA chair, James Jamieson.
Over the last decade, England has taken steps towards greater devolution, but areas outside the city regions have remained stuck in the ‘devolution slow lane’ and the UK remains one of the most centralised countries in the democratic world.
The Covid-19 crisis has demonstrated the strength of councils’ local leadership and the benefits that come from national and local government working together in partnership.
As we look towards securing a recovery that works for all, now is the right time to bring forward an ambitious new devolution settlement that gives councils the powers and funding they need to address regional inequality, tackle concentrations of deprivation and make towns and communities across England attractive places to live, work and visit.
No 10 says its proposed 'county deals' will mean rest of England can get same benefits as metro mayor areas
In his levelling up speech (full text here) Boris Johnson floated the idea of having directly elected mayors for counties. (See 1.01pm.) He also said:
We need to rewrite the rulebook, with new deals for the counties. There is no reason why our great counties cannot benefit from the same powers we have devolved to city leaders so that they can take charge of levelling up local infrastructure like the bypass they desperately want to end congestion and pollution and to unlock new jobs or new bus routes plied by clean green buses because they get the chance to control the bus routes.
Downing Street has now put out a news release saying it will be offering “county deals”, but that full details will not be available until the levelling up white paper, which is due in the autumn.
This is how it explained them.
New ‘county deals’ to take devolution beyond the largest cities, offering the rest of England the same powers metro mayors have gained over things like transport, skills and economic support.
County deals will be bespoke to the needs of individual places, bringing decisions closer to people and places, potentially allowing more places to benefit from strong, high profile local champions. County deals will give places the tools they need to pilot new ideas, create jobs, drive growth and improve public services.
Further detail will be set out in the levelling up white paper, but as the prime minister set out, county deals will not be one size fits all, and government will take a flexible approach to allow more places to agree devolution.
Updated
This is from Torsten Bell, chief executive of the Resolution Foundation thinktank, on the government’s new high street strategy. (See 3.51pm.)
I'm not saying England is centralised, but Westminster is now telling councils how to best remove graffiti https://t.co/PZLSbgtvTp pic.twitter.com/hZdRctIGAv
— Torsten Bell (@TorstenBell) July 15, 2021
It is of course possible that England's top graffiti removal expert is to be found in (graffiti free) SW1A
— Torsten Bell (@TorstenBell) July 15, 2021
UK records almost 50,000 new Covid cases – highest daily total for six months
On Monday last week, when he announced that he intended to press ahead with lifting most remaining lockdown restrictions in England on 19 July, Boris Johnson said that by that point new Covid cases could be running at 50,000 a day.
We’re four days away, but Johnson’s forecast has more or less been met. According to today’s update to the government’s coronavirus dashboard, there have been 48,553 new cases. That is the highest total for six months (since 15 January, when 55,761 cases were recorded). And the total number of new cases over the past week is up 32.6% on the total for the previous week.
There have also been 63 further deaths. Week on week, death are up 47.7%
Updated
On the subject of Brexit, PoliticsHome reports the latest on hurdles for touring musicians:
Exclusive: Craig Stanley, agent for Sir Elton John, lifts the lid on his recent meetings with government and Lord Frost about post-Brexit touring
— Adam Payne (@adampayne26) July 15, 2021
The blockage is being caused by refusal at the "highest level" of government to renegotiate, he saidhttps://t.co/5y3UgCVzkt
Updated
Two regions of England are recording their highest rate of new Covid-19 cases since comparable figures began in summer 2020, when mass testing was first introduced across the UK, PA Media reports. PA says:
The north-east recorded 835.8 cases per 100,000 people in the week to 11 July, while Yorkshire and the Humber recorded 462.7 per 100,000, according to the latest Covid-19 surveillance report from Public Health England.
All other regions are recording their highest rate since January.
Updated
In his speech earlier Boris Johnson said new town funds for England were being announced today. And he also said a new high street strategy was being unveiled.
The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government has now released some further details and it says there are 15 town deals, worth £335m. It says:
The town deals will fund community regeneration projects including repurposing empty shops on high streets, creating new public spaces, transforming a riverfront area into a community hub with entertainment and leisure venues, and creating a new digital enterprise and learning centre. Town deals have now been offered to all 101 places that were invited to develop proposals.
The 15 new town deals cover: Birkenhead £25m; Bloxwich £21.3m; Blyth £20.9m; Crewe £22.9m; Darwen £25m; Dudley £25m: Grays £19.9m; Millom £20.6m; Nelson £25m; Newhaven £19.3m; Runcorn £23.6m; St Helens £25m; Stainforth £21.6m; Tilbury £22.8m; and Todmoden £17.5m
The high street strategy includes plans to encourage walking and cycling; funding to tackle graffiti, and a chewing gum removal taskforce; a national high streets day; funding to save local pubs; the extension of pavement licences for hospitality; and plans to encourage street parties, particularly for the Queen’s platinum jubilee next year.
Updated
UK's Brexit divorce bill to EU set to total £37.3bn, latest Treasury figures say
The government expects to pay a Brexit divorce bill of £37.3bn, a total that falls short of the EU’s recent estimate.
In a statement to parliament today, the chief secretary to the Treasury, Steve Barclay, said the Brexit financial settlement was estimated at £37.3bn, within the government’s previous forecast range of £35-39bn.
The European commission, however, expects the final bill to be almost £41bn, based on an estimate of €47.5bn published in its annual accounts last week.
Officials insist there is no dispute, as the UK withdrawal agreement agreed in October 2019 by both sides specifies a method for calculating the bill, rather than an amount.
The government also said it had already paid a €3.74bn tranche of the Brexit bill this year. UK officials do not contest the EU statement that €6.8bn is due in 2021.
The government’s estimate was contained in an annual Treasury report on EU finances, which stated that £12bn has been spent across government departments since 2016 in preparing for Brexit, including no-deal planning and upgrading borders.
It also confirmed that the UK intends to opt back into EU programmes on research (Horizon), earth observation satellites (Copernicus), energy (Euratom research & training and Fusion for Energy). The UK will make a “proportionate contribution” to these programmes the government said, without revealing how much.
The Brexit bill consists of EU spending plans British governments signed up to during 47 years of membership, as well as the pensions and healthcare costs of senior EU officials. Some of the money is funding EU programmes in the UK that have not yet wound up.
The UK’s divorce payments to Brussels are expected to continue for decades, so the true Brexit bill will only be known long after today’s politicians have left the stage.
The opposition parties have dismissed Boris Johnson’s levelling up speech as empty rhetoric.
Ian Blackford, the SNP leader at Westminster, said:
For all the meaningless empty rhetoric, the fact remains that levels of poverty and inequality in the UK have risen to record levels on Boris Johnson’s watch - and planned UK government austerity cuts will make this growing Tory poverty crisis even worse.
You can’t level up by making millions of people poorer – but that is exactly what will happen as a result of Tory plans to impose a public sector pay freeze and slash universal credit by £1,040 for 6 million families.
Sir Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, said:
Far from levelling up, it’s clear Boris Johnson is just making it up as he goes along.
This rambling speech does nothing for the millions of people who work hard and play by the rules but are still let down by this Conservative government. It does nothing to help the self-employed excluded from Covid support, nothing for people with unpaid caring responsibilities and nothing for children who’ve lost hours and hours of teaching time.
And last night, responding to the extracts released overnight, Angela Rayner, the deputy Labour leader, said:
Boris Johnson has overseen the worst death toll in Europe and the greatest hit to any major economy.
Two years as prime minister and all we have is this empty husk of a speech that shows he has no plan for the future of our country other than pitching people and towns against each other.
Updated
Here is my colleague Jim Waterson’s story about the Information Commissioner’s Office’s raid on two homes as part of its inquiry into the leak of the Matt Hancock CCTV footage.
DUP says, for Northern Ireland protocol to be acceptable, NI would have say in making EU's single market laws
Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, the new DUP leader, has set out seven tests his party will apply before approving changes to the Northern Ireland protocol. He set them out in a speech in the Commons, where MPs have been debating the protocol, and they are summarised here.
DUP Leader announces Seven Tests for HMG plans on NI Protocol https://t.co/dppE3DJ3AE via @duponline
— DUP (@duponline) July 15, 2021
| @J_Donaldson_MP
The DUP is not saying explicitly the protocol must go, and Donaldson was speaking ahead of an announcement due within days from Lord Frost, the Brexit minister, in which Frost will propose changes to the way the protocol operates that would make it acceptable to the UK.
But in practice it would be impossible to meet all Donaldson’s tests without abandoning the protocol. That is because the purpose of the protocol is to keep Northern Ireland in the EU’s single market. But Donaldson says Northern Ireland should not be bound by single market rules if it does not have a say in making them - and he is not proposing that the UK rejoins the EU.
Computers seized as part of inquiry into leak of Hancock CCTV footage, Information Commissioner's Office says
The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has seized computers and electronic devices in an investigation into the leak of CCTV images of Matt Hancock, which was published in the Sun newspaper and led to his resignation as health secretary, PA Media reports.
The ICO said in a statement:
As part of the investigation, ICO teams searched two residential properties in the south of England on Thursday July 15 2021. Personal computer equipment and electronic devices were seized as part of the operation and the ICO’s enquiries into alleged breaches of section 170 of the Data Protection Act 2018 continue.
And Steve Eckersley, director of investigations at the ICO said:
It’s vital that all people, including employees and visitors to public buildings, have trust and confidence in the protection of their personal data captured by CCTV.
In these circumstances, the ICO aims to react swiftly and effectively to investigate where there is a risk that other people may have unlawfully obtained personal data. We have an ongoing investigation into criminal matters and will not be commenting further until it is concluded.
Updated
The TUC has described Boris Johnson’s speech as “empty soundbites”. Frances O’Grady, its general secretary, said:
We can’t level up the country without levelling up at work. This pandemic has brutally exposed the terrible working conditions, low pay and insecurity many of our key workers face.
So far, there has been precious little to show for the government’s vaunted levelling up agenda, and today’s speech will do little to change that.
With more than one million children of key worker households in poverty and 3.6 million workers stuck in insecure jobs, it’s time the government moved on from empty soundbites. Ministers must invest in good green jobs in industries of the future, ban zero hours contracts and give all of our key workers a pay rise.
And Gary Smith, the GMB general secretary, said:
Promises of ‘jam tomorrow’ don’t hold much hope when it’s Boris Johnson who is making them. Workers and their communities need to be able to see and feel a credible levelling up agenda by way of jobs and prosperity.
Updated
Summary of Johnson's levelling up speech and Q&A
Here are the main points from Boris Johnson’s levelling up speech and Q&A.
- Johnson said he was opposed to raising taxes for “hardworking people”. He was responding to a question about the plan for a £3bn tax on salt and sugar proposed in today’s National Food Strategy report, but, as Sky’s Sam Coates points out (see 12.13pm) what he said probably has much wider implications at a time when the government is under pressure to raise funds for projects like social care reform, or the move to a low-carbon economy. Asked about the food report, Johnson said:
I will study the report. I think it is an independent report. I think there are doubtless some good ideas in it.
I am not, I must say, attracted to the idea of extra taxes on hard working people.
- Johnson said he wanted to give more powers to local leaders, and suggested he would like counties to have mayors with similar powers to metro mayors. He said:
We need to rewrite the rulebook with new deals for the counties and there is no reason why our great counties cannot benefit from the same powers we’ve devolved to city leaders.
One possibility is a directly elected mayor for individual counties. And if you can think of a better title than mayor for somebody who represents a county then please send me an email.
He also said he wanted to see “people taking charge of their local area, leading it, and not just seeking opportunities to point out differences between themselves and central government, but actually taking responsibility for problems and solving them with our help”.
- He claimed that he had always said it was wrong to boo the England team. He said:
I always said that it was wrong to boo the England players, and that is my firm belief.
This might be true if taken as referring to words that have come out of his own mouth, but it is not true of his official No 10 spokesman, who at a briefing on Monday 7 June pointedly refused to condemn those booing the England team. By the end of the week, after this stance attracted criticism, Johnson and his spokesman were saying people should cheer the England team. The official spokesman briefs journalists once a day, after considering what questions are likely to come up and getting orders from the PM and others as to what he should say. Journalists assumed his wording on 7 June was deliberate.
- Johnson said it was “highly probable” that the worst of the pandemic is over. He said:
I wish I could say that this pandemic that we have been going through is over and I wish I could say that from Monday we could simply throw caution to the winds and behave exactly as we did before we’d ever heard of Covid.
But what I can say is that if we are careful and if we continue to respect this disease and its continuing menace then it is highly probable - almost all the scientists are agreed on this - the worst of the pandemic is behind us.
There are difficult days and weeks ahead as we deal with the current wave of the Delta variant and there will be sadly more hospitalisation and more deaths but with every day that goes by we build higher the wall of vaccine acquired immunity.
Dominic Cummings, who used to be Boris Johnson’s chief adviser and who is now one of his fiercest critics, did not like the speech either.
With all respect to this academic, this is 100% wrong. 'Levelling up' is not 'so powerful'. It's a vapid SW1 slogan like 'Global Britain' that *objectively does not work* & shows the *opposite* of 'strategy'. Cf blog later today https://t.co/PG0YLZpxnr https://t.co/PpVwaDGgAY
— Dominic Cummings (@Dominic2306) July 15, 2021
Today grid: crap speech (same he's given pointlessly umpteen times) supporting crap slogan, buried by their own food report which no10 having to knock down, all news lines now effectively like Dre's old Random Announcement Generator... SNAFU... Not staff fault: just Trolley Gvt
— Dominic Cummings (@Dominic2306) July 15, 2021
More than 1 million children affected by two-child limit on benefits, latest figures show
More than 1 million children are affected by the government’s two-child limit on benefits during the pandemic, according to government figures released this morning.
They show that in the year to April 2021, 1.1 million children living in 318,000 households were hit by the cap which limits universal credit and child benefit support to the first two children in a household, up 67,000 from 2020.
The pandemic has had a devastating effect on larger families, with the numbers affected by the two-child limit up 27% from 2020 figures and nearly double 2019 levels. These figures include children conceived before and during the pandemic, whose parents may have fallen into poverty after losing their jobs or becoming ill with Covid-19.
Child Poverty Action Group has called for a rethink. “Removing the two-child limit would only cost £1bn and would immediately lift 200,000 children out of poverty, and 600,000 children out of deep poverty,” it said today.
The figures also show that since 2019, there has been a 160% rise in the number of women forced to tell bureaucrats they had become pregnant from a rape, in order to escape the cap. In the year to April 2019, 510 women were exempted from the cap due to non-consensual conception but by April 2021, this had risen to 1,330.
Johnson's levelling up speech - verdict from Twitter commentariat
This is what political journalists and commentators are saying about Boris Johnson’s speech on Twitter. “Underwhelmed” probably sums it up.
From my colleague Heather Stewart
Felt like that levelling-up speech kicked off reiterating the long-understood problem of the North-South divide; segued into a confetti of existing policy (20,000 nurses); and ended with some speculative ideas about devolution that don’t seem to have been bottomed out yet.
— Heather Stewart (@GuardianHeather) July 15, 2021
From the Mail on Sunday’s Dan Hodges
What's already obvious from this speech is Boris has no clear idea himself what levelling up actually is.
— (((Dan Hodges))) (@DPJHodges) July 15, 2021
From Tim Montgomerie, founder of ConservativeHome (and, for a very brief period, an adviser to Johnson in No 10)
I still have absolutely no idea what levelling up* is.
— Tim Montgomerie 🇬🇧 (@montie) July 15, 2021
* Supposedly the Government’s biggest idea.
From my colleague Peter Walker
First time I can remember hearing a prime minister talk about glaring gaps in healthy life expectancy, as Boris Johnson is in his levelling up speech. BUT critics would note that *a lot* of these gaps widened massively amid the post-2010 austerity policies. It's well-established.
— Peter Walker (@peterwalker99) July 15, 2021
If ministers were ask people who examine these things, the likes of Michael Marmot, they could easily tell them what needs to be done to reduce these gaps. And they would also tell you that the decade from 2010 was disastrous on this front. A lot of it is making up lost ground.
— Peter Walker (@peterwalker99) July 15, 2021
The other tricky thing for Johnson govt is that if you read Marmot report & 10-year update, it makes it v clear that a vital part of improving opportunities is people not living/growing up in poverty. And benefits cap/end of UC uplift etc etc go against that idea.
— Peter Walker (@peterwalker99) July 15, 2021
From Newsnight’s Lewis Goodall
Judging by this speech the danger for the government's levelling up agenda is that it simply becomes a catch all term for govt policy on almost anything. PM just cited spending on crime, on mental health, on community sport all part of levelling up.
— Lewis Goodall (@lewis_goodall) July 15, 2021
This stuff isn’t easy. We have profound regional inequalities which won’t be easy to ameliorate-have to wait for the detail of the White paper. But we’re still not much the wiser either in terms of an actual definition of levelling up, broad strategy or the detail.
— Lewis Goodall (@lewis_goodall) July 15, 2021
From ITV’s Robert Peston
The heart of @BorisJohnson levelling-up speech is imperative of transferring power back to regions and localities. He says he wants a more flexible approach to devolution in England. He wants to see « shire mayors » or « county mayors » with the powers of metro mayors
— Robert Peston (@Peston) July 15, 2021
From the Daily Mirror’s Mikey Smith
So if I’ve understood that speech right, Boris Johnson wants other people to tell him what levelling up means?
— Mikey Smith (@mikeysmith) July 15, 2021
From Tom Newton Dunn from Times Radio
Boris Johnson’s levelling up speech: a powerful argument for the need to spread Britain’s wealth geographically, but does he really still need to make it, two years on? Isn’t it now time for delivery? The only new policy announcement in the speech: £50m for football pitches.
— Tom Newton Dunn (@tnewtondunn) July 15, 2021
From PoliticsHome’s Kate Proctor
Levelling up as a concept could be so good for the Tories. But that speech just didn't really cut it. Johnson himself said he was setting out a "skeleton" of plans, two years in. @jessicaelgot raises the important point of austerity economics hollowing out local Gov.
— Kate Proctor (@Kate_M_Proctor) July 15, 2021
From the Financial Times’ George Parker
Boris Johnson's enthusiasm for devolution - eg giving more power to "shire mayors" etc - will come as a pleasant surprise to some of those people, like Michael Heseltine, who are involved in that agenda
— George Parker (@GeorgeWParker) July 15, 2021
From Newsnight’s Ben Chu
Boris Johnson says levelling up "requires consistency from government, not chopping and changing"
— Ben Chu (@BenChu_) July 15, 2021
Many will note that his government scrapped the much-admired Industrial Strategy Council which had been in existence for just 3 years
Sky’s Sam Coates think that Boris Johnson’s comment about not being in favour of higher taxes for hardworking people (see 11.52am) has implications that go far beyond the sugar/salt tax proposal.
Key takeaway from Boris Johnson’s speech: a very clear and very important statement on tax not going up for hard working families
— Sam Coates Sky (@SamCoatesSky) July 15, 2021
If the PM means it, it’s a very important statement that goes further than the manifesto … but complicated many big policy decisions ahead
Watch it pic.twitter.com/kII12zYls2
Boris Johnson could have just ruled out a sugar tax. However the words from the PM have a much wider implications - if he means what he said
— Sam Coates Sky (@SamCoatesSky) July 15, 2021
Data published this morning showed that overall student satisfaction levels have plummeted to 75% from 83% pre-pandemic, by far the lowest ever result.
Under half of students thought their university had responded well to the pandemic in terms of teaching and learning, while just two-fifths felt that their university had given them enough mental health support during the pandemic.
The universities watchdog, the Office for Students, is urging universities to “learn lessons from the pandemic”, especially around mental health, since it’s looking increasingly likely that some restrictions will remain in autumn.
Nearly a fifth of the 332,500 students surveyed said they didn’t have the right technology to enable them to learn online during the pandemic, while a similar percentage struggled with access to the library and other resources.
However students appreciated universities’ efforts to make their campuses Covid-secure, with four-fifths saying they had felt confident about their physical safety during the pandemic.
While students in all subject areas were less satisfied with their courses than in previous years, there were particular falls in more practical degrees or those which usually involve study abroad, fieldwork or access to specialist facilities, including architecture, languages, design and geography.
The previous lowest score that universities received from their students was 80% in 2006, although questions change slightly year-on-year and the student body has grown significantly since the NSS began so it is not directly comparable.
Q: What will be the impact of opening up on places where few people have been vaccinated? In some parts of Birmingham six out of 10 adults have no had a first vaccine.
Johnson says overall vaccine take-up in the West Midlands is good. He says the government is trying to improve vaccine take-up.
And that’s it. The speech and Q&A are over.
Q: Why did you not acknowledge the impact of austerity in your speech?
Johnson says he never used to talk much about austerity. He says he did not think the term was a “helpful choice of words”.
Johnson stresses again that his levelling up project is not holding London back. Levelling up will benefit the whole of the UK, he says.
Q: From what you said in your speech about the “loony left”, it sounded like you only want to devolve power to people who agree with you. Is that right?
Johnson says he is willing to work with anyone.
Q: Do you feel your refusal to offer a full apology in the past for your comments about piccaninnies and Muslim women looking like letter boxes has encouraged people making racist comments online.
Johnson says he has apologised. He says he thinks people want to focus on practical steps that might address the problem.
Updated
Johnson says his social care plan to be published 'before too long'
Q: Will will have to wait until next year before throwing away our face masks?
Johnson says we are in a far, far better position than we were earlier in the pandemic.
He says the risks are diminishing the whole time.
Q: When will we see your plan for social care? It is almost two years since you said you had one.
Johnson says people will see it “before too long”.
Johnson says the achievement of the England team was “stunning”, even though they did not quite win.
Asked if he could learn from Gareth Southgate, he says: “I sit at their feet.”
Johnson effectively rejects proposal for £3bn sugar and salt tax
Q: What do you make of the National Food Strategy report?
Johnson says he will study it. There are doubtless good ideas in it. But he goes on:
I am not, I must say, attracted to the idea of extra taxes on hardworking people.
Johnson says people should imagine what the country might be like if all the country were as productive as the most productive areas.
Johnson claims he always said it was wrong to boo the England players.
Updated
Readers have pointed out that Boris Johnson was talking about Andy Street, the mayor of the West Midlands, when he was talking about what a high profile metro mayor can achieve, not Andy Burnham. Some might argue Burnham might be a better example, but Johnson definitely meant Street. I’m sorry about that mistake, and have corrected the earlier posts.
Johnson is now taking questions.
The first, from Tony Danker, head of the CBI, was inaudible on the Sky broadcast.
In response, Johnson says he is putting an emphasis on leadership because “you need a local champion” who can bring people together and project a story to the world.
He says he is glad the government and the CBI are now in lockstep. (For most of the past five years, the CBI has been strongly opposed to Tory policy on Brexit.)
Johnson says he would like to extend powers to local leaders to help with levelling up
Johnson says the central government in London has crushed local leadership.
He says he is interested in counties having their own mayors - but if anyone can think of a better title for them, he would be interested.
And he suggests there could be leaders put in place for certain purposes.
He appeals to local leaders to come to the government with plans for “strong, accountable leadership” - and how it could improve their areas.
Johnson says the most important factor in levelling up, the yeast that lifts the dough, is leadership.
The UK is not just one of the most imbalanced economies in the world, but it is one of the most centralised.
He says metro mayors are providing an answer. He used to be one, he says. And he says “Andy” [Street] is also playing that role.
He says Street answers the Kissinger question. Who do you call if you want to speak to the leader of his region.
(Henry Kissinger once said he did not know who to call if he wanted to speak to Europe.)
UPDATE: I’ve corrected this post. Johnson was referring to Andy Street, mayor of the West Midlands, not Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester (who arguably is a better example of the point he was making).
Updated
Johnson says he wants to turn the whole country into a more attractive place for investment, and a science superpower.
Referring to the battery centre where he is speaking, he says huge numbers of these batteries will be needed in the future.
Post-Brexit freedoms, like free ports, will drive those investments.
And a the new office for investments will bring investments to the whole of the UK. As an example, he cites the new Nissan investment in Sunderland.
Johnson says the government is rolling out apprenticeship because a high-level apprentice can earn more than a graduate after five years.
Johnson says new towns funds are being announced today.
And a new high street strategy is being announced today, he says.
He says having good schools also helps for communities too. He says the government is doing that on schools.
This is what No 10 said on this in its briefing at the weekend.
We are helping to close the opportunity gap in England by increasing primary school funding to a minimum of £4,000 per pupil and secondaries to a minimum of £5,000 per pupil and boosting investment in schools by £14 billion through to 2023-23 – an extra £840 per pupil.
Johnson says a key part of levelling up is allowing people to have a good job on decent pay.
Under Labour, private jobs fell by 3% in the West Midlands, he said.
One problem was lack of transport. That is why he is backing Andy Street’s plan for a new metro network.
Johnson is announcing more money for local football.
No 10 briefed on this at the weekend. It said:
As England faces Italy in the Euro 2021 final, the government has renewed its commitment to support local sports teams as a central part of levelling up opportunities for all.
£25 million has been committed to build new grass roots sports facilities, equivalent to 50 new artificial pitches, to ensure that all football fans have the chance to play their favourite sport.
Johnson is now quoting both football and the Bible to criticise policy that just favours the areas that are already prosperous. That would be live goal hanging, he says, or saying that to those that have, more shall be given.
He says greater national prosperity will help London.
Levelling up is not about spreading resources more thinly, he says.
Levelling up is not a jam-spreading operation. It’s not robbing Peter to pay Paul. It’s not zero sum, it’s win win.
Johnson says he does not want to hold areas back. This is one of the passages briefed overnight. He says:
It is vital to understand the difference between this project and levelling down.
We don’t want to decapitate the tall poppies. We don’t think you can make the poor parts of the country richer by making the rich parts poorer …
Johnson admits that other governments have tried to level up in this way. He accepts it will be difficult.
London suffered a 50-year period of decline, from the 1930s to the 1980s, he says.
He says when he was mayor, you could travel on the Jubilee line to east London and lose a year of life expectancy with every stop.
Updated
Johnson says there is every prospect of the economy recovering “like a coiled spring”.
But, in so far has the pandemic has entrenched inequalities, the government has to redouble its efforts to overturn those inequalities.
He says the UK is one of the most unbalanced countries in Europe, with big differences, for example, in life expectancy. A man in Glasgow is likely to live 10 years less than someone in Rutland, he says.
He says East Germany used to be far behind the west. But Germany has done a good job of levelling up.
He says talent is evenly distributed, but opportunity is not.
That is not just a moral mission, he say. He says without spreading opportunity, talent is being wasted.
Johnson says it is 'highly probable worst of pandemic behind us'
Boris Johnson is starting his speech now. He is at a battery production centre in Coventry.
He starts with Covid, and says he wish he could say we can throw caution to the wind on Monday. But he can’t.
But he can says, if we are cautious, it is highly probable that the worst of the pandemic is behind us”.
Boris Johnson's speech on levelling up
Boris Johnson will shortly be delivering his speech on levelling up. This is a lot of interest in it, partly because he is now saying that levelling up is the central mission of his premiership (he no longer seems keen to be defined by Brexit), and partly because, even though Johnson has been talking about levelling up since the day he became prime minister, he has said very little about what it means it terms of policy and outcomes. At the moment it is still mostly a slogan.
In so far as we do know what Johnson wants, he does not seem interested in having the success of his policy judged by the impact it has on poverty figure, or on regional inequality. He describes it much more in terms of promoting equality of opportunity. There is also a big emphasis on renewing infrastructure in the north of England with a £4.8bn levelling up budget that has been described by critics as a slush fund for Tory constituencies.
Here is my colleague Peter Walker’s preview story ahead of today’s speech.
Starmer launches summer listening tour in Blackpool, saying he wants 'robust' debates with non-Labour voters
Although much of the media focus this morning is on Boris Johnson, who is giving a speech on levelling up with the hour, Sir Keir Starmer is also out and out setting out his vision for the future of Britain. He is not giving a speech, but he will be in Blackpool where, as Labour puts it, he will be kicking off “a summer ‘on the road’, taking Labour’s offer out to communities across the UK”.
The party says Starmer wants to focus on debating three particular Labour policy proposals with people. It says they are:
Labour’s £15bn children’s recovery plan – including breakfast clubs and small group tutoring to help children catch up, mental health support in schools and an extension of free school meals.
A jobs promise to ensure every young person away from work for six months is offered a quality education, training or employment opportunity.
Labour’s proposals to ‘Make, Buy and Sell More in Britain’ – to help bring the jobs of the future to towns like Blackpool.
Starmer says he particularly wants to reach out to non-Labour voters. In a statement ahead of his visit he said:
For too long, politics has felt too remote from ordinary people’s lives and opinions. That’s why I’ve committed to spending a lot more time outside Westminster this summer, taking Labour’s offer on the road and direct to voters.
I’ve got plans to create opportunities for everyone, and I’m looking forward to debating them with local people in Blackpool. I’ll be having robust conversations with people, particularly those who didn’t vote Labour at the last election.
Henry Dimbleby, the food entrepreneur who produced the National Food Strategy for the government (see 9.24am) told BBC Breakfast this morning that his proposal for a £3bn tax on salt and sugar was unlikely to have an impact on consumers. As PA Media reports, he said the aim was to drive down the amount of sugar in sweet food items rather than simply charge more for them. He said:
There’s been a sort of arms race for sugar and our tolerance for sugar - we’ve needed more and more - and we’re just trying to take that down and get the sugar out of the system.
Minette Batters, president of the National Farmers Union (NFU), told Sky News this morning that she welcomed the emphasis in the National Food Strategy (see 9.24am) on making the provision of food more localised. She explained:
[The report] sets out a new paradigm and for me ... this is about getting back to cooking from scratch, it’s about whole foods.
I think we need to get back to a more localised system, a more added value food system.
We need to be refocusing on procurement in our hospitals and in our schools, buying British and making sure we really are supporting farmers here.
We’ve seen out of Covid how people are buying things out of retail and they are cooking things from scratch. Things really are now changing and we need to build on that.
Welsh first minister criticises PM's Covid policy, saying he has made England 'outlier' on face masks
Mark Drakeford, the Welsh first minister, has used interviews this morning to restate his opposition to two key elements of Boris Johnson’s Covid opening up policy.
Drakeford said he thought the PM was wrong to say that fully-vaccinated people returning from amber list countries after 19 July would no longer have to isolate. Wales is also adopting this policy, because many Welsh holidaymakers travel through airports in England and the Welsh government decided it would not be practical to try operating a different policy. But he said the Welsh government was advising people to holiday at home, and that Johnson’s move could backfire. He explained:
I do regret the fact that the prime minister has decided that people returning from amber list countries do not require to self-isolate. I think it runs the risk of re-importation of the virus into the United Kingdom, I think it runs the risk of new variants cropping up elsewhere in the world coming into the UK and into Wales.
When it was put to him on the Today programme that many amber list countries have lower Covid rates than the UK, he replied:
But when people are on holiday, they will behave in the way that people on holiday behave. They will be mixing with more people, they will be doing the sorts of things that bring them into contact with one another.
Here in Wales in September of last year, we ended up with considerable difficulties caused by the reimportation of the virus. People going on holiday to many other parts of the world and when they came back to Wales, they were already infected. That drove a new rise in infections here in Wales.
Drakeford also said that, on face masks, England, where policy is set by the UK government, was the outlier. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are all keeping the legal requirement for people to wear them on public transport, even though in England it is being lifted from Monday. Drakeford said this could cause confusion.
I think it will be difficult for people in England to know exactly what is required of them.
I’ve often been told by the UK government that we should work to have a four-nation approach to coronavirus and I don’t disagree with that at all.
But on this issue, the mask-wearing issue, we should be clear.
It is the UK government that is the outlier and if they were prepared to bring themselves into line with the decisions that have been made in Scotland and in Wales, for example, that would be clearer and simpler for everybody.
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Rishi Sunak says UK is bouncing back as payrolls soar in June
Rishi Sunak said Britain’s economy was bouncing back after the latest official figures showed the number of workers on payrolls surged in June by 356,000, my colleague Larry Elliott reports.
Minister suggests government will reject plan for £3bn sugar and salt tax
Good morning. As Patrick Butler and Damian Carrington report, this morning an independent review commissioned by the government is proposing a £3bn sugar and salt tax as part of a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” to break Britain’s addiction to junk food, cut meat consumption by nearly a third and help tackle climate change. The review, the National Food Strategy, is here, and here is our report on what it says.
But is there any chance of the government accepting its central recommendation? It does not sound like it. This is what Robert Jenrick, the communities secretary, told LBC this morning when asked about the proposed new tax on salt and sugar.
I think you have to be very cautious before putting burdens on members of the public, particularly those on lower incomes. I do think you have to be very careful about going down that route because I don’t want to make life more difficult for people on low incomes.
Jenrick also said the government would be considering the recommendations before publishing its own plans in the coming months.
In private, government insiders are reportedly even more negative about the recommendations. In his London Playbook briefing for Politico this morning Alex Wickham writes: “There was a chorus of angry voices in government and across the Tory party last night insisting that his top line recommendations would be rejected and were considered completely unworkable by ministers.
Here is the agenda for the day.
Around 11am: Boris Johnson gives his speech on levelling up in the Midlands. He will also do a Q&A afterwards with journalists.
12pm: Mark Drakeford, the Welsh first minister, speaks at the Institute for Government about devolution and the union.
12.30pm: Downing Street holds its daily lobby briefing.
2pm: Public Health England publishes its latest weekly Covid surveillance report.
Also, Sir Keir Starmer starts a two-day visit to Blackpool. It is the beginning of his summer “on the road” which the party says is about “taking Labour’s offer out to communities across the UK”.
Politics Live has been a mix of Covid and non-Covid news recently but today I will most be focusing on Johnson’s speech and on what Starmer has to say. For more coronavirus developments, do follow our global Covid live blog.
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