Health News at Your Fingertips

Sir Richard Leese, the Manchester city council leader, says the government did not provide evidence that shutting bars would stop the spread of the virus.

Councils provided an alternative plan, he says.

He says twice the government implied it would agree to what Greater Manchester wanted. But twice it was let down.

He says council leaders have still not had anything in writing about what is proposed.

Burnham says he is calling on parliament to intervene.

MPs should decide what a fair offer is, he says.

This is not just a matter for Manchester; other parts of England face being placed in tier 3.

So parliament needs to decide what is fair, he says.

He ends by urging people in Manchester to follow the rule and public health advice and “please look out for each other”.

Andy Burnham has arrived for his open-air news conference. He has been joined by some Greater Manchester council leaders.

He says people in Greater Manchester have already been under restrictions for three months.

People are struggling. To accept further restrictions would lead to more hardship and homelessness.

The people most affected by tier 3 rules would be people like bookies, taxi drivers, and people in pubs – people on low incomes.

But this is a city that has never just walked on by, and never will, he says.

The region proposed measures to support those on low incomes.

It would have cost £15m per month, he says. This was support to top up the furlough, because people cannot live on two-thirds of their wages.

This would have cost £90m by the end of the financial year, he says.

They were prepared to lower it to £75m, and then to £65m.

That was a bare minimum, he says.

But the government would not agree. It just walked away, he says.

He says Greater Manchester is still willing to do a deal. But it cannot do on on the terms offered.

From the Labour peer Stewart Wood, a former No 10 adviser to Gordon Brown

Public Health Wales has recorded 1,148 more Covid cases and 10 further deaths. The details are here.

That is the highest daily total for new cases. Yesterday there were 626 new cases, a week ago today there were 764 new cases and two weeks ago today there were 425 new cases.

Andy Burnham is about to hold a press conference.

Here is my colleague Josh Halliday’s story about the breakdown of talks between Burnham, mayor of Greater Manchester, and the government over plans for the region to be placed under the strictest tier 3 restrictions.

There have been three further Covid-19 linked deaths reported in the last 24-hour reporting period in Northern Ireland and 913 new cases of the virus, the Department of Health has announced. The details are here.

Yesterday there were six deaths and 820 new cases. A week ago today there were seven deaths and 863 new cases.

NHS England has recorded 134 more coronavirus hospital deaths. There were 57 in the north-west, 34 in the north-east and Yorkshire, 17 in the Midlands, nine in the south-west, seven in London, seven in the east of England and three in the south-east.

This is the highest daily figure on this count, during this wave of the virus, by some distance. Yesterday the figure was 76, a week ago the figure was 87 and two weeks ago the figure was 50.

The details are here.

Sir Keir Starmer says the collapse of the government’s talks with Greater Manchester is “a sign of government failure”. In a statement he went on:

The Conservatives have been treating local communities, particularly in the Midlands, north-west and north-east, and their leaders with contempt.

Labour recognise the need for stricter public health restrictions. However, that must be accompanied by extra financial support.

Labour will continue to support Andy Burnham in the fight for people’s jobs, lives and livelihoods.

According to the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg, government sources are claiming that the talks with Greater Manchester collapsed because Andy Burnham was “too proud” to do a deal. Greater Manchester sources say that’s not true.

(A lot of people think journalists should not report derogatory comments from anonymous sources. And ideally we shouldn’t. But some organisations – not just in politics – will only brief on this basis, and Boris Johnson’s Downing Street operation does this a lot. If you want to know what people are saying, unattributable quotes can have their uses. You might not know exactly where the quote is coming from, but normally it’s not hard to guess.)

Over the last few days the government has been engaged in simultaneous talks with Greater Manchester over tier 3 and with Brussels over the UK-EU trade talks. It did not strike a deal with Greater Manchester, and the talks with the EU remain deadlocked too.

Last Friday, No 10 said the trade negotiations were off. Since then Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, and David Frost, his UK counterpart, have been talking. It is widely assumed the talks will resume soon, not least because both sides want a deal, and the contours of a potential agreement are clearly visible.

But it’s not happening yet. Frost and Barnier spoke again today and after the call Barnier posted this on Twitter, effectively confirming the deadlock continues.

And No 10 released a statement saying:

Lord Frost and Michel Barnier had a constructive discussion. The situation remained as yesterday, and they will remain in contact.

On Friday Downing Street said: “Only if the EU fundamentally changes its position will it be worth talking.” Sources claim that is still the position.

In the House of Lords the government has suffered a huge, but essentially symbolic, defeat on the internal market bill.

Peers backed by 395 votes to 169 – a majority of 226 – a regret amendment to the second reading motion, criticising the provisions in the bill that would allow ministers to override the Brexit withdrawal agreement, in breach of international law.

The vote won’t stop the bill, or even change any of its provisions. But it signals to the government that there is almost no chance of it getting through its remaining stages in the House of Lords without fundamental changes.

Peers almost never vote to block a bill at second reading. But a regret amendment means they are only passing it with reservations. They are only approved in the Lords rarely.

The amendment, tabled by Lord Judge, a former lord chief justice, said, as an amendment to the motion that the bill be read a second time “but that this house regrets that part 5 of the bill contains provisions which, if enacted, would undermine the rule of law and damage the reputation of the United Kingdom”.

Thirty-nine Conservative peers voted against the government, including Lord Keen, the former advocate general for Scotland who resigned over the bill last month.

The Constitution Unit says this is the biggest government defeat in the Lords since 1999.

Here is the full statement that Robert Jenrick, the communities secretary, has put out.

I’m disappointed that despite recognising the gravity of the situation, the mayor [Andy Burnham] has been unwilling to take the action that is required to get the spread of the virus under control in Greater Manchester and reach an agreement with the government. I have therefore advised the prime minister that these discussions have concluded without an agreement.

The talks with Greater Manchester leaders about a tier 3 lockdown have broken up without a deal, my colleague Heather Stewart has tweeted:

Matt Hancock, the health secretary, will make a statement on coronavirus in the Commons at 7pm, it has been announced.

This is likely to about the plans for Greater Manchester to move into tier 3 restrictions. Assuming a deal has been reached by 5pm, which is still not inevitable, Boris Johnson is expected to give details at his press conference. But MPs have complained about announcements not being made in parliament, where they can question the minister, and a Commons statement would counter claims that parliament was being snubbed.

Turning back to Scottish independence for a moment (see 12.16pm), the leading psephologist Prof Sir John Curtice has written a blog about the latest polling on this topic which is invaluable for anyone following this issue closely. It’s here, on the What Scotland Thinks website.

Here are some of his main points.

• Curtice says nine polls in a row have put Yes ahead which is “a wholly unprecedented picture” – even if it is too early yet to know whether the Ipsos MORI poll putting support for independence at 58% (a record high) was evidence of a trend and not just an outlier.

• He says that whereas in 2014 men were much more likely to favour independence than women, that gender gap has disappeared, and now women are just as enthusiastic.

• He says that polls now suggest people in their teens or 20s are strongly in favour of independence, in a way they weren’t six years ago. He says:

On average, polls conducted since June have put support for independence among those aged 16-24 as high as 79% – compared with 56% among those aged 35-44 and just 33% among the over 65s. Most of those in the pollsters’ youngest age group of under 25s were too young to vote six years ago – and if those who enter the electorate anew continue to support Yes so heavily in future years then, other things being equal, it will with every passing year become gradually more difficult for No to win any second referendum ballot.

• He says people who do not have a firm view about independence – roughly a quarter of voters – are particularly likely to be pro-EU, and particularly likely to see how Brexit evolves before making up their minds on independence.

• He says even among those who voted Yes in 2014 only 30% think an independent Scotland should keep the pound in the short term before launching a separate currency – despite this being the SNP’s policy.