United Kingdom

    After nearly nine months of coronavirus restrictions, there may be a light at the end of the tunnel. The UK is the first country in the world to approve Pfizer’s jab for widespread use, with the NHS standing ready to begin immunising care home residents and staff next week. With an effective vaccine long been hailed a route back to life as we knew it, many are undoubtedly wondering how many people have to receive the jab to achieve herd immunity, freeing us of future lockdowns. Herd immunity occurs when an infection cannot take hold in a community. It can come about in two ways if a sufficient number of people have overcome a virus and are now immune, or via vaccination. In March, the UK’s chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance told ITV News: When you look ...

    A Labour MP has demanded Boris Johnson come clean about the risk of a third lockdown and accused the PM of not giving the public the full story on how effective the new tiered lockdown system will be. In a heated exchange in the House of Commons, Chris Bryant MP said that he thought it was almost certainly going to go back into lockdown in January. In response to Tory MP Desmond Swayne challenging the Labour's decision not to back tonight's vote confirming the restrictions, despite backing moves to contain the virus, Mr Bryant suggested that MPs were sick of the PM telling porkies. Mr Bryant said: A lot of us are concerned that the prime minister doesn't give the full story to the house and the nation. The truth is we are almost certainly going to see another lockd...

    Conservative rebels have warned Boris Johnson he must provide good evidence for his controversial new Covid-19 tiers or face a backbench revolt this week, despite an eleventh hour climb-down. In a dramatic about turn, Mr Johnson told MPs the new system could last just nine weeks and offered them another vote on the restrictions at the start of February. But Tory MPs warned the shift has yet to quell the rebellion. Pauline Latham, the Conservative MP for Mid-Derbyshire, said she might support the government in this week’s vote on the tiered measures if more evidence was laid out. She told Sky's Sophy Ridge On Sunday: I think it will depend very much on what Boris does between now and Tuesday. If he produces that evidence and he can prove to us that he's got good evi...

    Boris Johnson has  appointed Nadhim Zahawi as a health minister responsible for the deployment of the coronavirus vaccine, Downing Street has announced. The temporary position will last until at least next summer with Mr Zahawi temporarily relinquishing responsibility for most areas of his brief at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. The duration of Mr Zahawi's appointment suggests it could take up to six months for the vaccine to be fully rolled out across the UK. Mr Zahawi said he was delighted to be appointed to the role, vowing to ensure vaccines are rolled out quickly to save lives and livelihoods. On Friday, he said that he was extremely disappointed and sad that Warwickshire, where he serves as MP for Stratford-on-Avon, will be movi...

    Tens of thousands of struggling families on universal credit will be told in the run-up to Christmas their benefit payments are to be capped leaving them potentially hundreds of pounds a month worse off and at risk of destitution. Many claimants who lost their jobs in March under the first coronavirus lockdown and have been unemployed since will be informed in December by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) that their benefits will be slashed unless they find work. If they are capped, these households face benefit income losses averaging about £250 a month from January. For some families living in high rent areas such as London, being capped could leave them several hundred pounds a month out of pocket. Official figures published on Thursday show 170,000 hou...

    Boris Johnson has appointed former Treasury official Dan Rosenfield as his new chief of staff. Mr  Rosenfield, who is currently the head of corporate clients and UK business at strategic advisory firm Hakluyt, will begin work at Downing Street on December 7. His appointment comes two weeks after a power struggle erupted in Number 10 over plans to make former aide Lee Cain the new chief of staff. Lord Udny-Lister is set continue to serve as acting chief of staff until January 1, 2021, when Mr Rosenfield will formally take over, Number 10 said. Mr Rosenfield, from Manchester, was previously a managing director in investment banking at Bank Of America. Before than, he worked for more than decade in the Treasury, including four years as principal private secretary to C...

    Rishi Sunak will on Wednesday set out a £4.3bn plan to tackle the spectre of mass unemployment, as the chancellor braces Britain for the brutal economic fallout from the coronavirus crisis. Mr Sunak will tell MPs in his spending review that his number one priority is to protect jobs and livelihoods. The chancellor is due to say that now is not the right time to start a fiscal consolidation, even as he publishes what government officials admitted were scary new forecasts showing the economic destruction caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. The Office for Budget Responsibility’s forecasts are expected to show much higher unemployment and unsustainable public finances. Britain’s fiscal watchdog is set to warn that after the Covid-19 slump in output this year, with huge exp...

    Boris Johnson has been accused of trying and failing to interfere with the official inquiry into allegations of bullying by home secretary Priti Patel. After refusing to sack Patel, despite a summary of the report released on Friday finding that her conduct amounted to behaviour that can be described as bullying, the PM is now facing allegations that he attempted to pressure his standards adviser into watering down his conclusion. Downing Street has not denied suggestions that Johnson had approached Sir Alex Allan in a bid to tone down the report. The adviser quit on Friday when the Johnson overruled his conclusion that Patel breached the ministerial code with her behaviour towards staff, which Allan said included shouting and swearing. Offering what she described ...

    A trade and security agreement with Britain is close to being finalised but the risk remains of an accidental no-deal Brexit in six weeks, with gaps on the contentious issues slowly shrinking, EU ambassadors have been told. With Michel Barnier in self-isolation after an EU negotiator tested positive for coronavirus, the talks will be conducted almost entirely online over the next few days. The European commission’s most senior official, Ilze Juhansone, told representatives of the 27 member states in Brussels that the majority of the 11 key negotiation issues now had joint legal texts with fewer and fewer outstanding points. The two sides are also zoning in on agreements on EU access to UK fishing waters and the design of a mechanism to ensure neither side can disto...

    The government will set out what coronavirus restrictions might be in place for Christmas over the next few days, a cabinet minister has told Sky News. England's second national lockdown is due to end on 2 December, with the government having promised another tiered system of rules depending on local infection rates to replace it. The UK government and the devolved administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are also in talks over what COVID-19 measures should be in place over Christmas. Recent reports have suggested there could be a special easing of restrictions over the festive period in order to allow families to get together. Asked by Sky News' Kay Burley how many family members would be allowed to gather around a Christmas dinner table, Defence S...