United Kingdom

    Matt Hancock today launched a furious defence of his plan to pay people on low incomes £13 a day to self-isolate as critics said the payments would not be enough to stop people going to work. From September 1 people who receive Universal Credit or Working Tax Credit who are required to self-isolate, who are unable to work from home and who are in Covid-19 hotspots will benefit from the new payment scheme. Eligible people who test positive for the virus will receive £130 for their 10-day period of self-isolation while other members of their household, who under current rules must isolate for 14 days, will get £182. The scheme will initially be trialled in Blackburn with Darwen, Pendle and Oldham - areas which are currently subject to local lockdown measures. The Go...

    Downing Street has dismissed as “utter nonsense” claims that Boris Johnson is set to quit within six months due to continued ill-health from Covid-19. No.10 sources ridiculed a report by The Times diary column that quoted Dominic Cummings’ father-in-law as suggesting that the prime minister was ready to step down because of the lingering effects of contracting the virus earlier this year. The paper cited journalist Anna Silverman, who had last week visited Chillingham Castle in Northumberland, which is home to Sir Humphry Wakefield, father of Cummings’ wife Mary. Sir Humphry is said to have “merrily informed her that Boris Johnson is still struggling badly with having had Covid-19 (as if being a new father and needing to babysit Gavin Williamson isn’t tiring enough...

    A school in Scotland remains closed after 22 people tested positive for coronavirus. Kingspark School in Dundee was closed last Wednesday and pupils and staff were asked to self-isolate for 14 days. NHS Tayside said 17 staff and two pupils at the special needs school had tested positive for COVID-19, as well as three community contacts. Restrictions have been placed on care homes in Tayside to stop the spread of coronavirus in the area. The Kingspark outbreak has spread to two other schools in Dundee. A primary two class at St Peter and Paul’s School must self-isolate until 2 September after a positive test. And children who went to the Happy Times out-of-school club at Downfield Primary School have also been asked to quarantine after someone tested positive. Dr ...

    Masked-up and carrying placards and banners, 40 or so demonstrators walk out of a pedestrianised shopping street and make their way to the office of a newly elected Conservative MP, above a Chinese restaurant. Once there, they join in sporadic chants of No justice, no peace. It’s a drizzly, near-silent lunchtime in the Welsh town of Bridgend, a place that has played its own small role in Britain’s recent political convulsions, voting for Brexit and, in 2019, returning its first Tory to Westminster since 1983. Thanks to plans that were announced in April 2019, Ford will shut its local car-engine works next month, with the loss of nearly 1,700 jobs. Now, the sudden effects of Covid-19 on the local aerospace industry are only adding to the pain. The recession and the p...

    The government have drawn up battle plans for the possibility of being hit with a second wave of coronavirus and a No-Deal Brexit simultaneously, it has been claimed. Leaked documents warn of a potential social care crisis from councils going bankrupt and the army being drafted in to prevent public disorder. The revelation puts mounting pressure on ministers to negotiate a deal with Brussels to avoid a double-header in December, when it is predicted the country could be hit by a second spike. The classified file, seen by The Sun, appears to be in the form of powerpoint slides and is titled 'Preliminary set of Reasonable Worst Case Scenario Planning Assumptions to support civil contingencies planning for the end of the Transition Period'. It was created by the Cabi...

    A second national lockdown could be imposed, senior Government advisers have warned, as the upper limit of the R rate pushed over one for the first time since restrictions were lifted. The Prime Minister effectively ruled out another nationwide shutdown, stating that the option was now akin to a nuclear deterrent, in an interview with The Telegraph last month. However, on Friday the Sage advisory group said Britain’s reproduction number was now between 0.9 and 1.1, with senior sources warning “more nationwide measures” may be needed. Manchester, the country’s third largest city, has already faced a local lockdown, while Birmingham, the second biggest, is on the brink of restrictions after cases rose, leading to fears it could be only a matter of time before further...

    Britain’s public debt has burst through the £2tn ($2.65tn) mark for the first time, according to official figures. New data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) on Friday shows public debt at the end of July was bigger than the size of the entire UK economy for the first time in more than half a century. Analysts said UK government borrowing this year was on track to hit its highest share of GDP since the Second World War, despite coming in lower than expected in recent months. The government has ramped up spending on support for firms, workers, and public services to alleviate the devastating economic damage of the coronavirus and lockdown measures this year. Several business loan programmes, the furlough scheme, grants for the self-employed, a temporary...

    The proportion of GCSE entries awarded top grades has surged to a record high after a U-turn meant results could be based on teachers’ estimated grades . Hundreds of thousands of youngsters received their GCSE results on Thursday following major changes but around 200,000 Btec pupils will not get their final results following a last-minute review of grades. More than one in four (25.9 per cent) GCSE entries in England scored one of the three top grades this year, up from just over a fifth (20.7 per cent) last summer, figures from exams regulator Ofqual show. The percentage of exams graded level 9 the top mark has increased by 40 per cent from 4.5 per cent last year to 6.3 per cent this year. It comes after GCSE and A-level students in England, Wales and Northern I...

    Pressure is mounting on the Government to step in to save the retail sector after 7,000 redundancies at Marks & Spencer took the toll of high street jobs lost since the pandemic to more than 100,000. Pizza Express also announced 1,100 job losses tonight, with plans to permanently close 73 restaurants. And The Centre for Retail Research has warned that job losses across the sector could hit 235,704 this year, with more than 20,600 store closures. Centre director Prof Joshua Bamfield said: There are going to be a lot more job losses full stop, and many of them will be in the retail sector. Writing in the Mirror, Paddy Lillis, General Secretary of shopworkers’ union USDAW, said: Retail is an important feature of our towns and cities, it employs three million peop...

    Leicester could have its lockdown restrictions lifted as the UK records more than 57,000 Covid-19 deaths. It comes as the number of staff who have tested positive for Covid-19 at a Nottinghamshire dessert factory has risen to 72. It was announced on August 7 that all staff at the Newark Dessert factory would be tested after 39 coronavirus cases among workers. The council said 701 workers had now been tested and 72 had tested positive, although 33 fully fit and healthy staff had returned to work after isolating. Just over 57,000 deaths involving Covid-19 have now been registered in the UK, according to the ONS. However, last week saw the lowest weekly rise in deaths since before lockdown. Meanwhile, the future of Public Health England (PHE) is set to be announced l...