UK coronavirus live: ministers plan 14-day quarantine for arrivals as garden centres set to reopen- latest updates

Responding to Labour’s proposal for an extension to the evictions ban, and for renters to be given two years to pay back rent arrears, Amina Gichinga from the London Renters Union said this did not go far enough and rents had to be suspended altogether to protect renters:

Deferring rent just means renters will get into enormous debts – or be made homeless. Unemployment is going to rocket and we are not going to be able to afford a massive hike in our rent over two years.

We need rents to be suspended during this crisis, and the evictions ban needs to be permanent, so no one else is made homeless because of the pandemic.

The downturn is going to continue for a long time and many people are already in arrears. Without greater protection for renters, we’re heading for a chaotic rent debt and eviction crisis.

Research suggests millions in the UK are having to choose between paying rent and eating, after a survey found that six in 10 renters said they had suffered financially because of the pandemic. A separate poll found that up to 1.7 million private sector workers fear they will lose their jobs this summer and a growing number of people will need to rely on welfare benefits for the first time to cover basic costs.

In its five-point plan due to be presented to the government, Labour proposes an extension to the temporary ban on evictions for six months or however long is needed to implement the legal changes.

They also ask that renters should get at least two years to pay back any arrears accrued during this period; and that the government should bring forward its proposal to scrap section 21 “no-fault” evictions and outlaw evictions on the grounds of rent arrears if the arrears were accrued because of hardship caused by the coronavirus crisis.

The Coastguard has said that on Friday it had the highest number of callouts since lockdown began as people “ignore” the government’s stay-at-home message.

It said there were 97 incidents, 54% more than the average of 63 recorded for the previous month.

Matt Leat, duty commander with HM Coastguard, urged people to stop “ignoring” the government’s measures for the sake of the NHS and all those on the frontline:

I completely understand that the weather and the bank holiday coupled with the fact that we’ve been in this lockdown situation for just over six weeks has tempted people out to our beautiful coasts. However, as the government said only yesterday, it’s really vital that we all continue to observe the guidance.

Every time we get a 999 or distress call, we will always respond but the minute we send in a rescue response, we’re putting our frontline responders at risk as well as putting the NHS under avoidable pressure.

Please, please continue to observe the StayHomeSaveLives message – it’s still in place for a reason. Exercise locally and stretch your legs, not our resources.

Campaigners have called for a fundamental redesign of the transport system to help prevent a bounce-back in air pollution levels once the lockdown ends.

Nine organisations – Greenpeace UK, CPRE, Cycling UK, the Environmental Defence Fund, Global Action Plan, Living Streets, Possible, Transport Action Network and Transport & Environment – have written an open letter to the secretaries of state for transport and the environment, as well as the chancellor, leaders of local and regional authorities, and city mayors.

The group’s demands include wider pavements, protected cycle tracks, restricted through-traffic in residential and shopping streets through the installation of bus gates, bollards and planters, networks of low-traffic neighbourhoods, and walking and cycling to be prioritised along main roads.

Ministers are understood to be preparing to recommend that commuters use bicycles for journeys to work to reduce the number of people using public transport, according to PA Media.

The letter calls for “immediate action” to lock in some of the reduction in road traffic and the introduction of new measures to ensure that “when the nation gets moving again, it does so in a cleaner, safer way”.

Milan and Brussels have already taken steps to prioritise walkers and cyclists in their city centres, according to Greenpeace UK’s head of politics, Rebecca Newsom. She said:

There are many things about the lockdown people will be glad to leave behind, but cleaner air is not one of them.

Yet there’s a real risk that congestion and toxic pollution will be back on our streets as soon as restrictions are lifted.

Some of the world’s major cities are already reshaping the urban space to allow people to go out and about safely while keeping the air clean, and we need our political leaders to follow suit.

More than 650,000 people across the globe tuned in as the inimitable Andy Serkis completed a live theatrical reading of the entire Hobbit novel in just under 11 hours as part of a Covid-19 fundraiser.

Starting his performance at 10am BST on Friday, Serkis, 56, inhabited each character as he told JRR Tolkien’s classic 1937 story. The critically acclaimed actor is best known for playing Gollum in The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit films, and was awarded by Bafta earlier this year for his pioneering work in motion-capture in cinema.

He had raised more than £280,000 – with more than 20,000 donations from over 70 countries flooding in – by the time he finished just before 9pm. He paused only at 11am to observe a two-minute silence for VE Day, and for a spot of lunch and loo breaks throughout the day.

All donations through the GoFundMe campaign are to be split equally between NHS Charities Together and Best Beginnings, the latter of which Serkis has been an ambassador for more than six years.

Soon after completing the Hobbitathon, Serkis said:

Thank you ALL so much for tuning in and for supporting NHS Charities Together and Best Beginnings, who between them support frontline workers, parents and babies. I am truly humbled by the response! Because of you, we raised more than £280,000 and counting! Thank you again to @harpercollins and the Tolkien Estate for making this all happen. We are going to investigate with them more opportunities to share today’s “one-time” live event, so stay tuned. And with that, I bid you goodnight from London – and to you and your loved ones, stay well.

The Welsh first minister, Mark Drakeford, said he expected Wales’s “very modest” lockdown easing to be in line with what Boris Johnson will announce for England.

On Friday, Drakeford stole a march on the UK government when he announced that Wales would remain in lockdown for another three weeks with modest adjustments, including plans to reopen libraries and allow outdoor exercise more than once a day.

Amid signs of a rift between Wales and Westminster, he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that “only the very smallest and most modest steps … are allowable at this time” and he remained keen on the four nations working as one and expected Johnson to announce similar changes. He said:

We’ll hear from the prime minister on Sunday the details of what he proposes for England, my view is we’ll be very much in line with one another.

Our new regime won’t come in until Monday, so we’ll move in a timely way together across the UK and I still think that is very much a preferable route.

On BBC Breakfast, Drakeford said it was “definitely not” his intention for his announcement on Friday to pressurise the prime minister to come into step with Wales; it was merely the essence of devolution. He said:

It’s inevitable that we have to fine-tune that approach to meet the different circumstances of different parts of the United Kingdom but I think that we will move forward in the same basic way.

My responsibility is to tell people in Wales the regime that they will be facing over the next three weeks.

Our three-week review ended on Friday and I was keen to make sure that people in Wales know the decisions that their government are making on their behalf.

It’s not intended to be a form of pressure or anything else on anybody else, it’s simply in a devolved United Kingdom – 20 years of devolution – to discharge the responsibilities that we have in Wales in a way that demonstrates to people in Wales the decisions that we are making for them.