No 10 rejects London mayor’s claim capital not getting its fair share of vaccine
Updated
at 9.03am EST
London is not getting its fair share of vaccine, Sadiq Khan, the mayor of the city, has said. In a statement about today’s vaccination figures, Khan said:
I am hugely concerned that Londoners have received only a tenth of the vaccines that have been given across the country. The situation in London is critical with rates of the virus extremely high, which is why it’s so important that vulnerable Londoners are given access to the vaccine as soon as possible.
I have repeatedly called on the government to scale up the vaccine supply, and will be meeting the minister for Covid vaccine deployment [Nadhim Zahawi] today to ensure that we urgently receive an amount of the vaccine that reflects our size, density and the level of need in our city.
Activist and author Naomi Klein says she sees Covid as a teacher that highlights problems with the way we currently live.
Speaking at the Oxford Real Farming Conference last night, Klein said her new short film, “A message from the Future II” was an exercise in “dreaming our way out of this moment and imaging Covid as a teacher”. She said:
That was informed by social movements in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria. We talked about Maria, as a teacher, as a harsh teacher, unveiling and revealing pre-existing crises, but also creating a kind of a roadmap for how we change if we learn these lessons.
The film depicts a future where landscapes are rehabilitated, broken infrastructure is repaired and the cycle of endless consumption is broken. She said:
We end the film with this slogan that no one is sacrificed and everyone is essential. And, of course during this period, the people who were treated as disposable before the pandemic have really been treated as sacrificial during it.
It follows on from last year’s Emmy-nominated short film “A Message From the Future with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez,” which has been viewed more than 12 million times and looks at a potential future if the Green New Deal is pulled off.
Klein said creating the future depicted in the film was a combination of hope and hard work.
It’s not by any means coming out of a spirit of ‘we know that this future is coming’ – it’s not a prophecy. We get it if we earn it. And I think that that’s the message of the film.
Last year Klein told the Guardian editor Katharine Viner that the pandemic had forced us to think more about interdependencies and relationships, and said the recovery must have climate, quality and fairness as its core.
Updated
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The Scottish government has removed its Covid vaccination plan hours after it was published online, after the UK government raised concerns that the document included sensitive details about vaccine supply.
At her lunchtime briefing, Nicola Sturgeon said that her government had been “seeking to be very transparent … but the UK government has got some commercial confidentiality concerns about that”.
A UK government source told PA Media:
The reason we didn’t want to publish these figures was because everyone in the world wants these vaccines, and if other countries see how much we are getting they are likely to put pressure on the drug firms to give them some of our allocation.
Yesterday, Scotland’s health secretary, Jeane Freeman, revealed the location of a vaccine store in a Holyrood statement, something a Scottish government spokesperson later told the Sun should not be publicly identified for security reasons and should not be reported.
These mis-steps come after the Scottish government was accused of a “sluggish” initial roll-out of the vaccine and a lack of clarity around how Scotland’s allocation is being used.
Freeman confirmed yesterday a total Scottish vaccine allocation of 562,125 doses. Of those, 365,000 doses have arrived in Scottish vaccination centres or are with health boards or GPs while the rest are either in transit or in storage at an English logistics site.
Questions have been raised about why so many vaccines remain unavailable for immediate use after Freeman halved the target she set in November of vaccinating a million Scots by the end of January.
Before it was removed, the Scottish plan confirmed a series of targets:
- Over-80s to be vaccinated by first week in February, as well as care home staff, frontline NHS and social care workers (around 250,000 people).
- All over-70s by mid-February.
- All over-65s plus clinically extremely vulnerable by the beginning of March.
- All over-50s and vulnerable younger people by early May.
Sturgeon said today she was unable to give a definitive end date for whole Scottish population being vaccinated because there was a need for greater certainty on actual supply.
Updated
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North-east and Yorkshire doing best for over-80s vaccinations, and east of England worst, figures show
New figures released by NHS England this morning show differing rates of vaccinations across the different regions.
Almost 2 million people in England received their first dose between 8 December and 10 January. That figure has since risen to 2.25 million as of 12 January but the regional breakdown does not cover the last two days.
London has the lowest proportionate first-dose rollout to date at 2,231 vaccines per 100,000 population rising to 4,309 in the north-east and Yorkshire, close to twice the London rate.
Some of this discrepancy is due to differing population levels among the 80+ age category, one of the highest-priority groups: 3.4% of Londoners are aged 80 and over compared with 5.2% in the north-east and Yorkshire.
Here is a table showing the proportion of all vaccinations compared to 2019 mid-year population figures by NHS region.
Of the total number of first-dose vaccines administered to 10 January 1.04 million were among those aged 80 or older, meaning 37% of the over-80s population have now received a first dose of the vaccine.
A fifth of those – 374,000 people – have gone on to receive a second dose, bringing the total number of vaccinations administered in England to date to 2.37m doses on that date (rising to 2.67m by 12 January).
The UK needs to reach 2m doses a week if they are to reach the 13.9 million most vulnerable people by 15 February, when the government aims to “offer” a first dose to all those in four most vulnerable categories.
Updated
at 8.31am EST
Break-up of UK ‘real and present danger’, says Welsh first minister
The Welsh first minister and Labour leader in Wales, Mark Drakeford, has said a “radical redrawing” of the UK is needed to prevent the break-up of the union.
Speaking at the launch of a paper from the Radical Federalism collective setting out the case for “radical federalism”, Drakeford said the issue of the UK’s future constitutional structure was “one of the most important and neglected public policy issues of our time”.
He said “the break-up of the UK is a real and present danger”, arguing that the status quo was no longer viable after the people of Northern Ireland voted against Brexit in the referendum and in the light of the success of the Scottish National party.
Drakeford, however, said: “Independence is a 19th century solution attempting to attach itself to a 20th century problem.”
He said it was up to the Labour party to lead the argument that a “powerful and entrenched devolution settlement in a successful UK” was the way forward. “What we have to create is a new union,” he said.
Updated
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Eustice responds to cross-party barrage of complaints about post-Brexit fishing by blaming ‘teething problems’
If Boris Johnson thought he was going to spend the first few weeks of 2021 basking in praise from MPs grateful that Brexit has now finally happened, he will have been disappointed. At the first PMQs of the year yesterday he faces strong complaints about the impact of the deal on Northern Ireland and on fishing communities, this morning the complaints from the DUP are only getting louder (see 10.48am and 11.41am) and this morning George Eustice, the environment secretary, spent a torrid hour or more at the dispatch box in the Commons responding to an urgent question about the impact of the Brexit deal on the fishing industry.
Using exactly the same phrase that Johnson used at PMQs yesterday to play down the Northern Ireland border problems, Eustice said the difficulties faced by people in the fishing industry – including export delays, cancelled contracts, and falling prices, all the result of post-Brexit regulations – were just “teething problems”. He told MPs:
Yesterday we had a meeting with the Dutch officials, earlier this week we had a meeting with the French, on Friday we had a meeting with the Irish to try to iron out some of these teething problems.
They are only teething problems, once people get used to using the paperwork goods will flow normally.
But Eustice’s comments did not seem to impress MPs representing fishing communities, who subjected him to a barrage of complaints. Worryingly for Eustice (and Johnson), these included Tory MPs from the south-west of England and the north-east of Scotland – areas where the Conservatives have won seats partly on the back of Brexit, and where disappointment with the Brexit deal could be electorally perilous.
Steve Double, the Conservative MP for St Austell and Newquay, said:
[Eustice] will be aware that fishermen in Cornwall have been very disappointed with the agreement reached on quota with the EU and the fact that their vessels can still fish in our six to 12-mile limit.
There is real concern that our in-shore fleet, which makes up the vast majority of vessels in my constituency, will benefit little from this deal.
Douglas Ross, leader of the Scottish Conservatives and MP for Moray, said:
I’ve been contacted by many fishermen here in Moray and across Scotland raising their serious concerns and frustrations about the current situation …
One local skipper … agreed that I could share his returns from this week. He averages £30 a box from fish he’s landing, and £47 a box from the prawns he’s landing, and that’s half of what he needs to cover his costs.
Anthony Mangnall, the Tory MP for Totnes, said:
The fishermen of Salcombe, Dartmouth and Brixham are now being faced with catch certificates, health certificates, export documentation, all of which is extensive red tape and comes with a cost. So can I ask [Eustice] what his department is doing to reform that system, to improve [and] reduce the bureaucracy?
And Sheryll Murray, the Conservative MP for South East Cornwall (whose former husband was a trawlerman who died at sea), said:
My constituent, Andrew Truss, the owner of Ocean Harvest, is finding that the high cost of border control charges, export health certificates, the need for a fiscal rep in France and the uncertainty his fish will reach the buyer in the EU is posing a real to his business. What compensating measures is the government going to put in place?
In response to this question, and others, Eustice suggested traders would manage much more easily once they were used to the new paperwork.
Updated
at 7.54am EST
Almost three-quarters of a million people were identified as coming into close contact with someone infected with Covid-19 in the week to 6 January, the latest test and trace figures (pdf) show.
The number of close contacts identified has increased significantly in the last four weeks, according to the Department of Health and Social Care, reaching 736,939 in the most recent week.
The number of people testing positive also reached a record high, with 388,037 people tested positive for Covid-19 in the most recent week. However, due to the lack of widely available testing in the first wave the figure is not easily comparable with earlier stages of the pandemic.
Of contacts identified by test and trace teams, 92.7% were reached and asked to self isolate in the most recent week.
Updated
at 6.58am EST
Northern Ireland at risk of ‘major crisis’ with food supplies, Stormont minister claims
Northern Ireland faces a “major crisis” with food supplies when the three-month grace period for the new post-Brexit customs rules comes to an end, its agriculture minister has said.
Edwin Poots, a DUP minister in the power-sharing executive, made the claim this morning on the BBC Radio Ulster’s Nolan Show. He said:
It was made very clear to us by the suppliers to both hospitals and schools that if the current arrangement for supermarkets isn’t extended in a few months’ time that they will not be able to supply our hospitals and schools with food.
That is a major crisis and I have raised this with Michael Gove [the Cabinet Office minister].
Seriously, are we going to have a situation where our hospitals and schools are not able to feed the children at school, they’re not able to feed their patients?
That is an outrageous situation that we in Northern Ireland have been put in as a result of the protocol negotiated between the UK government and the European Union.
Under the Northern Ireland protocol, part of the Brexit withdrawal agreement, Northern Ireland remains in the EU’s single market, which means that food supplies going from Britain to Northern Ireland can be subject to checks.
Supermarkets have a three-month grace period before these rules apply in full (and a six-month grace period for chilled meats), but already stores in Northern Ireland are having problems with supplies.
At PMQs yesterday Boris Johnson said these were just “teething problems”.
Updated
at 6.59am EST
Priti Patel, the home secretary, has said the government is not planning to tighten lockdown restrictions “today or tomorrow” – suggesting that new measures could be introduced next week. In an interview with ITV’s This Morning, where she was asked whether further restrictions could include a 3-metre social distancing rule or the requirement to wear masks outside, she replied:
The plans are very much to enforce the rules.
This isn’t about new rules coming in, we’re going to stick with enforcing the current measures.
We are not thinking about bringing in new measures today or tomorrow.
Updated
at 6.18am EST
