UK coronavirus live: Scotland to reopen schools in August as Sturgeon lays out lockdown easing

The Conservative backbenchers Henry Smith has outraged opposition parliamentarians by saying that the objection to MPs returning to the House of Commons after next week’s recess (when the current, largely-virtual proceedings will end) has come from the “lazy left” and from “workshy” Labour and nationalist politicians.

Labour’s Jess Phillips was one of the MPs who condemned Smith on Twitter.

And a Labour party spokesperson said:

The government’s own public health advice has said that those who can work from home should and parliament has developed a system using technology to ensure the scrutiny of government whilst allowing people to work remotely.

Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, told the London assembly this morning that he is considering banning passengers from buses and tube trains in the capital if they are not wearing a face covering. He said that he was hoping to persuade the UK government, which is currently just advising people to wear face coverings on public transport, to toughen its stance. He told the assembly:

We don’t want confusion. When there is a crisis, what’s important is to have message clarity.

He said that he was hoping to persuade the government “to do the right thing”. But, if that did not happen, he said next week he would consider using the powers he has as mayor to make the wearing of face coverings compulsory on Transport for London tubes and buses.

The Conservative peer Chris Patten (see 11.53am) and the public administration committee chair William Wragg (see 8.33am) are not the only Tories calling for migrant care workers to be exempt from the NHS surcharge. In the Evening Standard Joe Murphy and Nicholas Cecil have rounded up some more rebels on this issue, including Bob Neill, the justice committee chair, Robert Halfon, the education committee chair, and Sir Roger Gale, a former party vice chairman. Gale said that not waiving the surcharge would “rightly be perceived as mean-spirited, doctrinaire and petty”.

The number of people moving to the UK long term from non-EU countries has hit a new record high, according to the latest estimates. As PA Media reports, last year immigration from non-EU countries rose to 404,000, the highest it has ever been since records began in 1975 when it was 93,000, data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) shows.

Net migration from outside the EU, the balance between the number of people entering and leaving the country, is also at its highest level (282,000) since citizenship information was first collected in 1975 (40,000). Both figures have continued to rise since 2013.

Meanwhile, EU net migration fell to 49,000, down from 75,000 recorded a year earlier and after hitting peaks of more than 200,000 in 2015.

Downing Street has described the complaint about Boris Johnson to the Independent Office for Police Conduct as a waste of police time. Responding to the news that the IOPC is not launching a criminal inquiry (see 11.45am), a spokesman for the prime minister said:

We welcome the fact that this politically motivated complaint has been thrown out. Such vexatious claims of impropriety in office were untrue and unfounded.

An independent review by the government internal audit agency similarly showed the claims made by the Labour party were false.

This was not a policing matter, and we consider this was a waste of police time.

Sturgeon says universities and colleges should have a phased return next term.

On schools, she says today she has published a report from the education recovery group.

• All schools in Scotland will re-open from 11 August, Sturgeon says. Pupils will get “a blended model of part time in-school and part time at-home learning”.

Sturgeon says that the Scottish government will produce new guidance for the extremely clinically vulnerable people who have been told to shield (ie, not leave home). This will be out by 18 June, she says.

Sturgeon gives details of what will be allowed from 28 May.

In her speech Sturgeon says that she expects the phase one measures to come in from 28 May.

But not every phase 1 measure will come in on that day, she says.

Here is a chart from the document (pdf) explaining the four phases.

And here is a chart showing how the rules on meeting people and travel will change as Scotland moves into the next phases.

These are two of the nine charts in the annex to the document explaining in detail what will be allowed at different stages.

Sturgeon says there are now an estimated 25,000 infected people in Scotland. But there has been a significant and sustained reduction, she says.

She says the government now estimates the R number (the reproduction number, the rate at which the virus is spreading) at between 0.7 and 1.

She says in March it was thought to be above four.

But now it is thought to have been below 1 for three weeks, which means she feels able to set out the next steps for easing the lockdown, she says.

Sturgeon is now setting out the latest daily figures.

She says 51 people were in intensive care last night with coronavirus.

There have been a further 37 deaths, she says, taking the total to 2,221.