Health News at Your Fingertips

The government will step up to help people more over the coming months, a minister has promised ahead of record energy bills set to be announced on Friday.

Will Quince, an education minister, said there was “no question” there would be further support on top of what was announced in May.

Energy bills are widely expected to top £3,500 per year for the average household from the start of October, compared with £1,971 today.

“There is no question in my mind whatsoever, both listening to the two leadership candidates but also just looking at our economy … that the government is going to act and put in place a further package of support measures,” Quince told LBC radio.

“Now, we will have to wait a couple of weeks for a new prime minister to set out their agenda alongside a new chancellor, but both leadership contenders have been clear there will be a fiscal event and more help will be coming.”

Keir Starmer is planning a trip to Ukraine in the late autumn as he moves to cement his relations with the Kyiv government as it continues its fight against Russia, my colleagues Luke Harding and Rowena Mason report.

That is all from me for today. My colleague Nadeem Badshah is taking over now for the rest of the evening.

Liz Truss has joined Rishi Sunak, her rival in the Tory leadership contest, in saying the Covid lockdown was too strict. Asked about Sunak’s comments in his Spectator interview (see 9.22am and 9.47am), she said:

I didn’t actually sit on the Covid committee during that time, I was busy striking trade deals around the world.

My view is we did go too far, particularly on keeping schools closed.

I’ve got two teenage daughters and know how difficult it was for children and parents and I would not have a lockdown again …

I was very clear in cabinet, I was one of the key voices in favour of opening up.

Steve Barclay, the health secretary, has been harangued by a passerby outside a hospital who demanded to know what he was going to do about the ambulance waiting time crisis. She said that during their 12 years in office the Tories had done “bugger all about it”.

Wes Streeting, the shadow health secretary, agrees.

Ipsos has released some new polling that suggests that, by a margin of more than two to one, people do not trust Liz Truss to reduce the cost of living. Keir Starmer has the best ratings on this measure of the four politicians featured in the poll, followed by Rishi Sunak, Boris Johnson and then Truss.

In an interview shown on Sky News Truss was asked about the poll. She brushed aside the findings, insisted that she understood the problem and that she would make sure people could “keep more money in their pockets”. She said:

I am somebody in every job I’ve done in government that’s followed through on what I promised, whether it’s delivering the trade deals at the trade department, delivering on the Northern Ireland protocol bill at the Foreign Office.

And I can assure people I understand the problem, I understand high energy costs, I will work to deal with the supply issues, and also make sure that people are able to keep more money in their own pockets.

The “money in pockets” line was a reference to Truss’s plan to cut national insurance. In its report today the Resolution Foundation says this would not address the problem. It says:

Whatever your view on the wider costs and benefits of large tax cuts proposed by Liz Truss, they are largely irrelevant to the problem facing the country this winter. Reversing the recent national insurance rise would see twice as much of the benefit go to the top twentieth (28 per cent) as the entire bottom half (15 per cent), and despite energy bills rising across the country it would raise incomes in London (£640) by twice as much as in the North East, Yorkshire & the Humber and Wales (£290 a year).

The Resolution Foundation thinktank has published a report today setting out two options for addressing the energy bills crisis. It says other proposals on the table to address the problem do not go far enough. It is particularly scathing about the plans for tax cuts from Liz Truss, who seems all but certain to be next prime minister. Her ideas are “largely irrelevant to the problem facing the country this winter”, the thinktank says.

My colleague Larry Elliott has a summary of the report here.

And Torsten Bell, head of the Resolution Foundation, has posted a good thread about the report on Twitter. It starts here.

Prof John Edmunds, head of infectious disease modelling at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and one of the most prominent and influential figures on Sage during the pandemic, has responded to Rishi Sunak’s criticism of the pandemic scientists. He says that if Sunak thinks the economic consequences of lockdown did not receive enough attention, then Sunak himself is to blame, because as chancellor he should have been commissioning that analysis.

In a statement for the Science Media Centre, Edmunds said:

It is not well understood, but Sage’s role was quite narrow: to review and assess the scientific evidence to help inform the decision-makers. It did not consider the economic aspects – it was not asked to do so and was not constituted to do so.

There may be some truth to the argument that the scientific evidence often outweighed the economic data; however, the answer is not to get less scientific evidence (or ignore some scientific evidence), but to build up a clearer picture of the economic and wider impact of different policies, using the best evidence available at the time. I am not aware of this happening in a systematic, open, peer-reviewed way.

Where, for instance, was the equivalent of Sage and all its subgroups on the economic side? Was there an army of economists in universities and research institutes across the country working night and day to collect, sift, analyse and project the possible impact of different policies? And if not, why not? As the chancellor of the exchequer Mr Sunak could have set up such a system, but did not.

Tom Whipple, science editor at the Times, has joined those saying that Rishi Sunaks’s criticisms of Sage over Covid policy are unfounded. (See 9.22am and 9.47am)

The epidemiologists did explain how their modelling worked, Whipple says.

And there was intense debate about whether it was right to close schools, Whipple says.

Labour campaigners have been posing on Parliament Square as Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak relaxing in deck chairs on holiday, for a stunt photocall.

They are out to make the point that the Tories are “chilling on the job” at a time of national crisis, while Labour has a plan to address the energy bills crisis.

(You can see the point, and Labour is right to say that the government has been on autopilot in recent weeks, but visually it does not work because in one sense it is completely wrong; Truss and Sunak are probably about the only MPs who have not had a holiday this summer, because they have been participating in endless leadership hustings.)

Grant Shapps, the transport secretary, has signed a deal with his Ukrainian counterpart, Oleksandr Kubrakov, saying the UK will help Ukraine repair its transport infrastructure. The Department for Transport says:

After a presentation from Ukrainian officials on the true impact of the war to their train network, roads and bridges, the two transport leaders signed a joint action plan to help restore these vital links. It agrees to share expert advice from prestigious UK-based private-sector organisations. The UK will also send five buses from the Go Ahead Group to support reconnecting the Ukrainian public and buy equipment to repair routes which are crucial for the exportation of grain.

Experts will offer knowledge in airport, runway and port reconstruction, and will work with the Ministry of Infrastructure to identify training opportunities for airport staff, air traffic controllers and aviation security.

A question from below the line.

Andrew,

What does Dominic Cummings’ shopping trolley emoji mean?

Dominic Cummings regularly refers to Boris Johnson as the shopping trolley, or trolley, or just by using the emoji, because he says Johnson is indecisive and veers all over the place on policy, like a shopping trolley.

But, interestingly, it was not Cummings who coined this insult; it was Johnson himself. In the run-up to Brexit, before he had decided whether to back leave or remain, he described himself as “veering all over the place like a shopping trolley”.