Boris Johnson news – live: ‘Shameful and crass’ PM refuses to apologise after blaming care homes for coronavirus deaths, as UK resumes arms sales to Saudi Arabia
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No 10 has said Boris Johnson won’t be offering an apology to the care sector after provoking anger with his claim “too many” care homes didn’t “properly follow procedures” during the coronavirus crisis. Care sector chiefs condemned his remarks as “cowardly”.
"Care homes across the country were dealing with an extraordinary amount of different guidance that was coming out from Government on an almost daily basis.", Vic Rayner, executive director of the National Care Forum, told the BBC "So for the suggestion that they were not following procedures as laid out is totally inappropriate and, frankly, hugely insulting."
It comes as the government announced Britain will resume selling arms to Saudi Arabia despite assessing the country could be using them to commit war crimes. Meanwhile, Russia said it would hit back at UK sanctions against 25 Russian officials with reciprocal measures.
Elsewhere, Huawei has denied targeting members of the British elite for support. It follows claims made in a new dossier – reportedly compiled with the help of former MI6 spy Christopher Steele – that the firm tried to persuade high-profile figures in the UK to act as “useful idiots”.
Legislation will look at all investments, says minister
Business secretary Alok Sharma said new legislation would be reviewing major investment from all countries, not only projects where China was involved.
Asked on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme whether the government would be reviewing China’s investment in UK nuclear power, he said: “We will be looking at all of this in the round.”
He added: “The key thing I just want to say is ... we will look at all investments that are made in the UK, we will look at that against the criteria we have set out in the Enterprise Act, that will be set out in the National Security Investment Bill, and that will be for all investments that are made rather than picking and choosing individual countries.”
Moving on to discussing Huawei, Sharma said: “I don’t want to go into the details of a particular country but you will know that, as a result of the initial sanctions that the US has put in place against Huawei specifically, we are having a look to see what the impact would be on UK networks.
“There is a process ongoing, we will see what that review comes to and we will set out our next steps.”
Sunak urged to unveil £200bn post-Covid stimulus package
Chancellor Rishi Sunak is being urged to unveil a cash injection worth £200bn in order to help the economy recover after the coronavirus crisis.
The Resolution Foundation think tank has called on the Cabinet minister to further loosen the purse strings, having already announced a string of wage subsidy and emergency loan schemes since the outbreak started.
James Smith, research director at the Resolution Foundation, said: “The Covid-induced economic crisis is like no other crisis we’ve seen.
“A £200bn fiscal stimulus should therefore focus on protecting jobs and supporting spending in hard-hit sectors of the economy, and reflect the fact that low-income households have found it far hardest to cope.”
Johnson ‘certainly not blaming care homes’, says minister
Business secretary Alok Sharma has claimed Boris Johnson did not mean to blame care homes for deaths – and had only been pointing out that no-one had known what the correct procedures were.
“The prime minister is certainly not blaming care homes,” the cabinet minister told the BBC.
“What the prime minister was pointing out is nobody knew what the correct procedures were, because we know that the extent of the asymptomatic cases was not known at the time.”
Was Johnson actually said was: “We discovered too many care homes didn’t really follow the procedures in the way that they could have, but we’re learning lesson the whole time”.
Labour’s response to the row? MP Rushanara Ali told Newsnight last night: “The audacity to blame care workers who have lost lives, who have sacrificed so much, is shocking and I think it’s got to stop.”
Covid-19 death toll officially reaches 50,000 in England and Wales
The coronavirus death toll in England and Wales has reached 50,000, according to newly published Office for National Statistics figures.
Weekly data published on Tuesday show there were 50,000 cases where Covid-19 was mentioned on death certificates between 28 December and 26 June.
‘British sanctions won’t have impact without EU’
What impact can the UK have now the country is going it alone of sanctions against alleged human rights abusers?
Commentator Lauren Crosby Medlicott argues that the foreign secretary Dominic Raab’s autonomous programme “will not produce proposed results and is ill-timed”.
“Following Brexit and coronaviurs, the UK is in a weak position. We are not in a place to bargain with other countries as all of our chips are gone,” she writes.
More here:
Kremlin: Russia will respond to UK sanctions with ‘reciprocal measures’
Russia will respond with reciprocal measures to British sanctions against 25 Russians, including the country's top state investigator, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
Britain imposed sanctions on 25 Russians and 20 Saudis on Monday as part of post-Brexit measures foreign minister Dominic Raab said were aimed at stopping the laundering of “blood money”.
No 10 must ‘tread carefully’ with China, ex-chancellor warns
A closer look now at ex-chancellor Phillip Hammond’s warned of an alarming rise of “anti-Chinese sentiment” within the Conservative Party – as he suggested the UK should avoid jeopardising its trading relationship with the world’s second largest economy.
Hammond, foreign secretary when David Cameron declared a “Golden Era” of Sino-British relations, said the UK was already “loosening its ties” with the EU in “the name of expanding its global reach”.
“It seems to me this is not a time to be wanting to weaken our trade links with the world’s second largest economy,” he said. Hammond added: “I’m concerned about the outbreak of anti-Chinese sentiment within the Conservative Party.
“As I say, it’s always been right to be clear-eyed about the challenges of a relationship with China and frank about the differences we have with China, but that seems to me over the last months to have accelerated into something which is becoming a little bit more alarming.
“At the same time, we are in a position where need to build our trade relationships around the globe, but China is Britain’s third largest trading partner after the EU and the US and I think we need to tread carefully in how we manage this relationship.”
Our correspondent Ashley Cowburn has more:
Former Labour MP pleads guilty to child sex offence
Former Labour MP Eric Joyce has pleaded guilty to making an indecent photograph of a child. Joyce, who represented the party for Falkirk between 2000 and 2012, appeared at Ipswich Crown Court today for a pre-trial hearing.
According to the BBC, Joyce was charged last month after being arrested in November 2018. The charge alleged that he had made an indecent photograph of a child which was found on a device and classified as a Category A image.
Judge Emma Peters said that the single 51-second movie, found on a device, “depicts a number of children”.
Police forces should record misogyny as hate crime, says campaigner
Police forces across the UK should immediately start recording misogyny as a hate crime, a leading campaigner has said.
The comments come as Labour’s metro mayors lent their support to a parliamentary proposal launched by MP Stella Creasy centred around making the police start recording misogyny as a hate crime. The Labour MP for Walthamstow has put forward an amendment to the domestic abuse bill which would make this possible.
Sylvie Pope, who helped spearhead the campaign for misogyny to be treated as a hate crime, told The Independent seven police are already recording misogynistic hate crimes – and called on more to act. “Police can start doing it from today … we hope to see more police forces adopting it immediately.”
Our women’s correspondent Maya Oppenheim has more details.
PM refuses to apologise for blaming care homes for coronavirus death toll
Boris Johnson is not offering an apology or formal retraction for his claim that some care homes “didn’t really follow the procedures” to protect residents and staff from coronavirus, Downing Street has indicated.
Asked what Johnson meant by his comments, the PM’s official spokesman told a Westminster briefing: “Throughout the pandemic care homes have done a brilliant job under very difficult circumstances.
“The prime minister was pointing out that nobody knew what the correct procedures were because the extent of asymptomatic transmission was not known at the time.”
Asked if Johnson would like to apologise or retract the comments, the spokesman said:
“As I’ve just set out, the PM thinks that throughout the pandemic care homes have done a brilliant job under very difficult circumstances.”
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