Health News at Your Fingertips

The Welsh first minister, Mark Drakeford, has continued to urge Boris Johnson to bring in laws stopping people from travelling from English Covid hotspots to areas of Wales with low levels of infection.

Residents of areas under local lockdown in Wales are unable to cross county boundaries without good reason but that does not stop people from Wales travelling across the border for leisure.

Drakeford said: “I’ve asked the prime minister to impose in England the same rules as we have here in Wales. I think that would be fair and I look forward to hearing from him.”

The first minister said Wales could bring in rules to stop people travelling from England but he thought it right for the prime minister to take responsibility.

Drakeford put the R number at around 1.3.

The Trump administration is sending the same message as the US Democrats in warning that a US-UK free trade deal could be blocked if the Northern Ireland Good Friday Agreement is undermined by Brexit, Mick Mulvaney, US special envoy for Northern Ireland said on Friday.

Speaking at an event hosted by Policy Exchange, he said:

(he was) “using different tones but probably at the end of the day the same message. We do not want to see things going back to the way they were before the Good Friday Agreement”.

He also urged the UK to recognise that the Democratic chair of Ways and Means in Congress Richard O’Neill has almost complete power to determine how any UK-US free trade agreement is handled, adding the whole of Congress will study Brexit to ensure it takes into account the preservation of the Good Friday Agreement.

He insisted the Trump administration was delivering essentially the same message as the Democrats, but in a different tone.

He said:

The administration believes just as much in the Good Friday Agreement as Richy O’Neill. There are only two things left in Washington that are truly bipartisan – one is mistrust of China and the other is seeing a peaceful island of Ireland.

On a much delayed visit to Belfast, London and Dublin, Mulvaney was treading a delicate line between his administration’s support for Brexit in principle and the strong Irish vote in America. He pointed out the Catholic vote, not just the Irish Catholic vote, could end up as the swing vote in the battleground states in US Presidential elections.

He repeatedly insisted he was not commenting on the Withdrawal Agreement, but only on how it impacted on the Good Friday Agreement. He said the US was confident that there would be an agreement between the UK and EU by the end of the year, but needed to protect the Good Friday Agreement.

At her daily briefing, Nicola Sturgeon said that Margaret Ferrier’s actions were “reckless, dangerous and completely indefensible and I feel very angry on behalf of all of you”.

Sturgeon said that there could be a variety of reasons why people find it hard to follow rules, they are complicated but “I am struggling to put what Margaret did into any of these categories”.

She is blunt: Ferrier’s was a “flagrant” breach and although “she accepts without reservation that she has made a very serious error of judgment … Can she give me a cogent explanation why she did it? No.”

Travelling by train with a positive test result for Covid was “possibly the worst breach imaginable”, says Sturgeon. “I can’t excuse this, nor am I going to try.”

Sturgeon then goes on to offer a comprehensive timeline for what happened this week.

She says that on Monday, Ferrier told the party in Westminster that she was returning home because a family member was unwell. On Wednesday, she told them about her positive test, which they assumed had happened after her return to Scotland. The truth of the situation became clear through “information from the Commons test-and-trace system” on Thursday morning.

The first time Sturgeon herself knew was Thursday afternoon, shortly after first minister’s questions. The SNP was told the Commons wanted to put out a statement first. Sturgeon wanted Ferrier to issue a statement immediately afterwards, but Ian Blackford, the party’s Westminster leader, was on a plane to Inverness and needed to speak to Ferrier when he landed. Then the situation with the Commons statement changed, and Ferrier put out her statement, followed by the SNP suspending her.

She added:

I think the SNP has acted quickly and appropriately and we have not tried to protect a colleague.

People full of self-righteous criticism of the SNP are folk who completely lost their tongue over a certain special adviser.

Sturgeon insists that there is not “one rule for us politicians and one for everyone else”. She said:

The most important relationship I have right now is with the Scottish public and I can’t ask you to make sacrifices if I am standing here trying to explain away Margaret Ferrier.

Ursula Van der Leyen is expected to host a press conference shortly with an update on the last round of Brexit talks.

UK negotiator David Frost is due to make a statement around 4pm on talks Downing Street has described as “constructive and wide-ranging” .

The European commission president will speak with Boris Johnson tomorrow afternoon “to take stock of negotiations and discuss next steps”, No 10 has said.

All expectations are that there is no breakthrough with talks now expected to intensify in a confidential “tunnel”.

One EU political source said the mood was downbeat:

The UK are making out that the EU needs to move, that there is a deal on the table and all it will take is for the EU to move. That is not the way it is and it feels like Britain is setting up a blame game, but the reality it is is not that close. There has been progress but there is no deal in sight.

In a reference to Boris Johnson’s breakthrough meeting with the Irish taoiseach Leo Varadkar in the Wirral last year, the source added: “Ursula von der Leyen will not be talking to Boris Johnson about a walk in the park, it will be ‘do we give this one more week’.

Amendments to local lockdown rules in Wales are being made to help ease the emotional toll on people who live alone.

Adults living by themselves, including single parents, in areas under local restrictions will be able to form a temporary bubble with another household in their local area under the new rules coming into force on Saturday (3 October)

The change is designed to help protect people living alone from the risk of experiencing loneliness and isolation and will enable to them to meet other people indoors – something, which is ordinarily not allowed unless someone has a reasonable excuse anywhere across Wales. The rule of six will apply to these new single people household bubbles.

Welsh first minister Mark Drakeford, said:

The coronavirus pandemic has taken a huge toll on all of us – we’ve all been through so much this year already.

Many people will have the support of their family at this time but large numbers of people – young and old – live alone. None of us should have to face coronavirus on our own.

Creating temporary bubbles for single people and single parents in local lockdown areas will make sure they have the emotional support they need during this time.

The Welsh government has carried out the latest 21-day review of the coronavirus regulations but will not be making any major changes to the national rules because of the overall rise in cases across Wales.

However, the government will strengthen enforcement powers for local authorities to fine people who organise house parties and to simplify the process to introduce restrictions on drinking alcohol in public.