No10 press conference, Big Bang reopening at Step 4 confirmed. A summary:
- Almost all legal restrictions will end, and guidance will be moved to advisory
- No limits on social contact, no capacity limits at venues, all remaining businesses can reopen, including nightclubs
- Government's domestic vaccine passports scheme not going ahead
- No legal requirement for covid certification to enter any mass events
- Businesses / venues / grounds can voluntarily adopt a vaccine passport regime, and use the NHS app
- 1 Metre Plus rule scrapped
- All legal regulations to wear face masks scrapped, replaced by general health guidance but not specific about any sectors
- businesses or transport provides can still insist on face masks as a condition of custom
- Limit of 5 named visitors to care homes lifted
- Government will no longer instruct people to work from home if they can
- Will instead be up to employers to start planning for return to work, but not in a hurry, “over the next weeks or months”, No10
- Covid secure guidance discontinued: eg no legal need for perspex screens
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Some interesting other measures in the Govt's Step 4 policy document that the PM didn't announce: QR codes will continue in pubs / restaurants, and if you're pinged you will still have to isolate - but premises will no longer be forced to display them, just "encouraged" to.
There is also a big safety net. Rather than irreversible, the roadmap is actually very reversible. Govt quietly reserving the right to impose "economic and social restrictions at a local, regional or national level" if NHS capacity is threatened. Local authority powers also kept.
A further safety net also quietly being kept in reserve: domestic vaccine passports - 'certification' - will be imposed if the NHS comes under heavy pressure in the Autumn / Winter.
Interesting conversations with two different ministers tonight. Both support PM’s caution in unlocking this far, but have serious concerns about how the July 19 delay now plays out. They (individually) make the point that cases + hospitalisations and, to a lesser extent, deaths…
…will rise further now sharply, and still be rising in 4 weeks time, but hopefully with a slower rate of incline once more second doses kick in. But they fear the PM will come under huge pressure from the CMO/CSA, Labour and opinion polls, not to unlock when numbers are still…
…pointing upwards, and hospitalisations are in the high 100s and deaths in high two or three figures daily. They wonder, if Johnson doesn’t unlock then, “when can we ever?” The answer, they say, is he will have to bite the bullet once and for all and declare a number of daily…
PM's G7 press conefrece to start a few minutes early, at 1.55, to avoid the 2pm England kick off clash. Listen live on @TimesRadio (while watching the game on telly with the sound down?)
Press conference: Boris Johnson appears to concede his target of 1 billion doses directly donated by the G7 has fallen short. Some are instead "via funding to covax".
The spectacularly big row over whether to allow Australian agriculture zero tariffs in a trade deal - as per @pmdfoster and @GeorgeWParker's top scoop today - is now engulfing at least half the Cabinet. I learn however that George Eustice has a plan to end the stand off (1)
Eustice, who wants to protect UK farmers from being under cut, will tell Liz Truss he will accept zero tariffs but NOT zero quotas. Instead, flashpoint Australian imports, such as beef and lamb, must have annual caps, or TRQs (tariff rate quotas) as they're known (2)
The Australians must then be told its TRQs on beef and lamb or no deal, and then challenged to bring down the whole thing over that one element. “They’ve defended their interests well. We just need to do the same for ours”, one close to the talks tells me (3)
Matt Hancock reveals there are now 2,323 cases of the Indian variant of covid across the UK. Almost doubled in four days, since the 1,300 on Thursday. 483 of those cases in Bolton and Blackburn alone.
Hancock rams it home to the vaccine hesitant: “Look at what has happened in Bolton: those who chose not to have the jab have ended up in hospital, some of them in intensive care. Vaccines save lives, Mr Speaker".
People aged 37 will be invited forward for a jab from tomorrow, Hancock reveals. The 35s will follow later in the week.
Oxford’s Emeritus Professor of Medicine Sir John Bell tells T&G nobody should go on a foreign holiday this summer: “I don't think anybody's going on a holiday, except in the UK. There are very broad swathes of Europe that are largely unvaccinated...
“...so they’re pretty vulnerable to new variants, be it Indian or otherwise sweeping across the continent. Having people flying around and coming back with whatever local variant they run into, that is not a good idea. Cornwall or Bournemouth is not so bad".
“I don't want to be a party pooper but the most important thing is not to prolong this any longer than we absolutely have to, so going about this cautiously could be quite helpful to everybody.”