UK coronavirus live: No 10 does not rule out PM having to self-isolate if Sharma has Covid-19

Black Lives Matter UK has announced a protest in response to Public Health England’s report which confirmed black Britons are up to four times more likely to die from Covid-19 than their white counterparts.

Among other causes, the report (pdf) points to socioeconomic deprivation within ethnic minority communities and barriers to accessing healthcare.

With many returning to work in the phased reopening of the economy, the campaigners want to know how those most affected, especially black key workers, will be protected.

They are demanding that the government investigates the root causes of disparities in health for black people and people of colour and provides a roadmap with individual, community and structural interventions.

The campaigners are calling for a doorstep protest, so people who don’t feel comfortable protesting outside due to the pandemic can take part. People will be urged to play Jimmy Cliff’s ‘The Harder They Come’ at 7pm this evening, with the timeslot a reference to the ‘clap for carers’ campaign, since BAME people are overrepresented in the NHS and other essential services.

Dr Rochelle Burgess, a PhD lecturer in global health at UCL, said:

The findings of the PHE report are not really a surprise to anyone who is a person of colour in this country, or the world. It is painfully clear that none of this data will change without action at an individual level and structural change. Our governments need to do both, and they need to do it now.

Birmingham city council has urged demonstrators to keep 2 metres apart during a Black Lives Matter demonstration in the city centre this afternoon.

Hundreds have indicated they will attend the rally in Victoria Square from 4pm, including the Aston Villa defender Tyrone Mings.

It comes after pockets of protesters clashed with police as thousands of people gathered in central London on Wednesday, and abandoned social distancing, for a BLM demonstration in response to the death of George Floyd in the US.

The West Midlands police assistant chief constable, Matt Ward, said:

Our aim is to allow and facilitate peaceful protest, and therefore we are not going to stop people coming out on to the streets if they’ve got legitimate concerns they want to share.

You can still protest while maintaining social distancing.

Birmingham city council said it supports the BLM movement but urged protesters to keep 2 metres apart and stay in groups of six or fewer.

The lives of security guards, cleaners and maintenance workers are being put at risk by the premature reopening of parliament, the prime minister has been told.

A union representing more than 800 parliamentary staff has written to Boris Johnson voicing their safety concerns following this week’s return to physical voting and attendance by MPs.

The Public and Commercial Services union (PCS) said the nature of their members’ jobs meant they were more likely to be at risk from Covid-19.

The letter said many members had been expected to continue working throughout the crisis without adequate access to PPE and without proper consultation with their employers over their rights at work.

The self-isolation of the business secretary, Alok Sharma, after he become unwell in parliament on Wednesday showed how the risk to MPs and all staff remained very high, the PCS said.

The general secretary, Mark Serwotka, said in the letter that social distancing and the observing of pathways broke down during voting by MPs earlier this week.

Staff believe they (and MPs) are now at increased risk of contracting Covid-19 and this, in turn, is impacting on the mental wellbeing of our members working on the estate.

Many people can work from home, but those working as security guards, cleaners, catering staff, do not have the ability to do this.

These dedicated workers are on the frontline in parliament and across government departments, putting their lives at risk.

We believe parliament has opened too soon and the lives of PCS members, and those of our sister unions, are being put at risk unnecessarily.

We would therefore be grateful for your urgent intervention in this matter; the safety of our members and all of those working on and attending the parliamentary estate is paramount.

One more person with coronavirus has died in Northern Ireland, taking the total recorded by the Department of Health – a toll primarily accounting for hospital deaths – to 535.

There have been another 33 confirmed cases of the virus, bringing the total since the outbreak began to 4,773.

NHS England has announced 115 new deaths of people who tested positive for Covid-19, bringing the total number of confirmed reported deaths in hospitals in England to 27,159. The full figures are here.

Of the 115 new deaths announced on Thursday:
– 24 occurred on 3 June
– 49 occurred on 2 June
– nine occurred on 1 June

The figures also show 25 of the new deaths took place in May, seven occurred in April, and the remaining one death took place on 20 March.

NHS England releases updated figures each day showing the dates of every coronavirus-related death in hospitals in England, often including previously uncounted deaths that took place several days or even weeks ago. This is because of the time it takes for deaths to be confirmed as testing positive for Covid-19, for postmortem examinations to be processed and for data from the tests to be validated.

The figures published on Thursday by NHS England show 8 April continues to have the highest number of hospital deaths on a single day, with a current total of 899.

The government is expected to spend £132.5bn on coronavirus policy interventions, up 7.5% on previous estimates last month, according to the fiscal watchdog.

The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) said it expects spending on furlough schemes and grants to the self-employed will cost an estimated £132.5bn in this financial year, rising from £123.2bn at the last update on 14 May.

Officials have previously said the extra spending was helping to partially offset the plunging GDP used to measure growth.

The OBR also estimated last month that the deficit could hit £300bn this year, with a scenario of a three-month lockdown and three months of restrictions being eased.

But there are now fears that once the money dries up the UK could face unemployment levels not seen since the 1980s.

The OBR said:

The government’s economic policy response to the coronavirus crisis … will have substantial direct budgetary costs. But the measures are designed specifically to support the economy through this temporary shock, and so they should help prevent greater economic and fiscal damage in the long term.

It added that the new numbers have been calculated as more data and spending information becomes available, but warns that further updates may be needed.

The OBR said it will focus its forecasts on the cash impacts from policies, for example the grants scheme for self-employed workers affected by the lockdown.

Longer-term costs to the economy will be factored in at a later date, the OBR said, adding:

How the impacts are recorded in the public finances is a matter for the ONS, and that is a further source of uncertainty until those classification decisions are made.

Breaking out some of the costing estimates, it said the furlough scheme bill is expected to increase by £4bn compared with last month’s estimates.

The gross costs for the furlough scheme is cut from £63bn to £60bn, once the new arrangements are brought in from August under which employers must contribute to furloughed staff bills.

But tax receipts from the scheme have been revised down, bringing a net cost of £54bn, compared with £50bn in the previous estimates.

A final self-employment grant due to launch in August is also included, bringing the estimated total cost for the payments to £15bn, up from £10.5bn.

Other added costs include £100m for removing import duties on medical products and a further £100m on bringing VAT for PPE to 0%.

All other estimates were left unchanged from the 14 May update.

In the Commons the Speaker, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, has approved an emergency debate on how the House of Commons operates during the coronavirus pandemic. It will take place on Monday.

The request for the debate was submitted by the Lib Dem MP Alistair Carmichael, who represents Orkney and Shetland. In the debate on the new arrangements on Tuesday, he explained why expecting MPs to attend the Commons in person was so unreasonable for someone with a constituency like his. He said:

In order for me to get here today, it required a journey of 18 hours, starting with an aeroplane, a taxi, a normal train and four hours in Edinburgh waiting for a sleeper train that I picked up at 1 o’clock this morning to arrive at Euston at 8am. I cannot and will not do that every week. Apart from anything else, the return journey will be 26 hours long and would require me then to go into self-isolation for 14 days – the only responsible way to live in a community such as mine. Having come here, I am here for the duration, because I cannot go back until it is safe to my family and my community for me to do so.

And, in tweets this afternoon, Carmichael says the illness of Alok Sharma (the SoS in the second tweet below) makes the case for a rethink even stronger.

Public Health Wales said a further eight people have died after testing positive for coronavirus, taking the total number of deaths in Wales to 1,379.

And another 35 people have tested positive for Covid-19, bringing the total number of confirmed cases there to 14,238.

At her press briefing in Edinburgh Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, said that the reproduction number in Scotland, R, has dropped to between 0.7 and 0.9. Previously R (a measure of how widely the virus spreads from an individual) was between 0.7 and 1. Ministers say it is essential that it remains below 1 because above 1 every person infected spreads the virus to more than one other person (to two people if R is at 2 etc).

For the UK as a whole the most recent estimate, issued last Friday, is between 0.7 and 0.9.

The new Scottish estimate does not take into account the impact of the modest relaxation of lockdown in Scotland, and Sturgeon stressed it was important to remain cautious. She said:

I can’t stress enough how fragile it still remains because we are seeing new cases in most health board areas every day. It remains relatively steady which underlines our caution and care which we need to take.

Boris Johnson has opened the virtual Gavi global vaccine alliance summit being hosted by the UK. In his speech, he said he hoped it would provide a “moment when the world comes together – uniting humanity in the fight against disease”. He went on:

To defeat the coronavirus we must focus our collective ingenuity on the search for a vaccine and ensure that countries, pharmaceutical companies and international partners – like the World Health Organisation – co-operate on a scale beyond anything we have seen before.

We must use the collective purchasing power of Gavi, the vaccine alliance, to make that future vaccine affordable and available to all who need it.

If we are to make this the beginning of a new era of global health collaboration, we must also replenish the funding for the vaccines we already have – strengthening the routine immunisation against preventable diseases in the poorest countries.

Turning back to Suella Braverman’s comment about her tweet in defence of Dominic Cummings earlier (see 10.34am), these are from Jolyon Maugham QC, director of the Good Law Project.

The Downing Street lobby briefing has finished. Here are the main points.

• The spokesman played down the likelihood of Boris Johnson being asked to self-isolate if Sharma does test positive – even though the two men attended a meeting together yesterday – but did not rule it out. The 45-minute meeting, which was also attended by Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, took place in the cabinet room at No 10. The spokesman said that the meeting, like all meetings at No 10, was “properly socially distanced” and that the participants stayed more than 2 metres apart. The spokesman said that the test and trace guidance was “not as simple as saying if you have been in a room with someone who has tested positive for coronavirus you are required to self-isolate”. People have to self-isolate if they have had face-to-face contact, at a distance of less than 1 metre, with someone who tests positive, or if they have spent more than 15 minutes within two metres of that person. But the spokesman did not go as far as saying that he was confident that Johnson would not be asked to self-isolate if Sharma tested positive. Asked if Johnson would comply if he were asked to self-isolate, the spokesman said: “We would follow the advice given by the medical experts.” The spokesman also said that the cabinet room was “vigorously cleaned” yesterday, but that that was usual practice and happened every day.

• Downing Street is not reconsidering the government’s move to abandon virtual sittings of the House of Commons in the light of Sharma’s illness, the spokesman said.

The position of the government is that herd immunity has never been its policy.

But the spokesman did not deny that Johnson had said the words attributed to him in the programme and, when asked if he was willing to clarify this directly with the PM, he suggested there was no need because he had made the position clear.

• The spokesman said 171,829 tests were carried out in the 24 hours to 9am yesterday. But the government had the capacity to carry out 220,213, he said.

• The spokesman confirmed the Telegraph story (paywall) saying that tens of thousands of coronavirus tests were returned void after being sent to a US laboratory for analysis. He said 67,000 tests had been sent to the US, and 29,500 were returned void. The laboratory was not being used again, he said. He said in total 4.2m tests had been carried out.

• The spokesman denied a Telegraph report (paywall) claiming hairdressers in England could be allowed to open as early as 15 June. He said the ambition was to reopen them from July at the earliest.

• The spokesman did not challenge a Guardian report saying that in some areas up to 90% of primary schools remained closed this week, even though schools in England are meant to be reopening for some year groups. One survey suggests 44% of English primaries remained closed. The spokesman said that what happened this week was “broadly … in line with expectations” and that “we expect that attendance will grow over time”. He said official attendance figures would be published next week.

• The spokesman said the government has ruled out running the school meal voucher system in England over the summer holidays. But there will be a £9m programme offering some pupils activities and meals, said the spokesman, who also hinted it might be expanded.

• The spokesman said the government did not agree with the suggestion from Sir Richard Dearlove, the former head of MI6, that the Covid-19 virus was man-made. Dearlove made the claim in an interview with the Telegraph. “We have seen no evidence that the virus is man-made,” the spokesman said. But the spokesman did not rule out Dearlove’s theory that the virus escaped from a laboratory. He said an independent inquiry was needed to establish where it came from.

• Grant Shapps, the transport secretary, will take the afternoon press conference, the spokesman said. The questions will come from regional media, not national media.

In case you missed it … In this week’s episode of the Bafta-nominated Anywhere But Westminster series, the team return to Middlesbrough, which has had one of the highest infection rates in the UK.

Far away from ministerial briefings and political intrigue, Covid-19 has worsened already ingrained problems: biting hardship, precarious work and the feeling that government has left people to sink or swim. There is hope and energy at the grassroots but can things really change?