“We’re now on the road to recovery, and just as we start the monumental task of recovering NHS services, I want to give you what you need to recover from this difficult period, and make it as easy as possible for you to do your jobs.”

Sajid Javid – Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, Department of Health and Social Care 2 July healthcareleaders.blog.gov.uk 

To my NHS colleagues,

The NHS is an institution that is close to my heart, and the hearts of so many people across the nation. It was there for the birth of my children, and cared for my father in his final days.

I feel a deep affection for the NHS, and the brilliant people who work there. As the first Secretary of State for Health from an ethnic minority, it’s a great privilege to be representing this diverse institution that represents the very best of modern Britain.

I was determined to get on the frontline and see this for myself. So my first visit as Secretary of State was to St Thomas’ Hospital and vaccination centre, to meet the doctors, nurses, porters, cleaners and volunteers who’ve contributed so much to our fight against this virus, and to our vaccination programme which has given us hope of a brighter future.

We’re now on the road to recovery, and just as we start the monumental task of recovering NHS services, I want to give you what you need to recover from this difficult period, and make it as easy as possible for you to do your jobs.

Just as we recover we must also reform. We are modernising the Mental Health Act to improve services for the most serious mental illnesses. We’ll also keep bolstering the foundations of our NHS. Primary care will continue to be central to our plans to level up the health of the nation, and we’ll continue to build more hospitals and make sure we bring even more people to the front line. Any proposal we bring forward will build on the spirit of integrated working you’ve embraced so enthusiastically, because we know we’re at our best when we work as one.

It’s so important to me that we work together to get this right, and I’m looking forward to meeting as many of you as I possibly can, and to hearing your views.

You’ve all done so much to support this country through this tough 18 months. I will do everything in my power to support the NHS, as we put this pandemic behind us and look ahead to the next chapter.

Sajid Javid, Secretary of State for Health and Social Care

The Conservatives have an “unhealthy financial reliance” on property developers, with more than a fifth of all donations to the party over the past decade coming from the residential property sector, a report by a leading anti-corruption group has said.

“Build, build, build” – Owl

Peter Walker www.theguardian.com 

While it could not be conclusively proven that government decisions were shaped by this flow of money, such a reliance on housing-based donations created “a real risk of aggregative corruption”, Transparency International said.

The report also highlighted serious concerns about a lack of information on lobbying by housing groups, saying that this, coupled with a rapid turnover of ministers and civil servants, added to the undue influence exerted by the sector.

In contrast, while private renters make up almost a fifth of all households in Britain, there was “a notable absence of tenants at the table” when decisions were made, making it less likely that bold solutions would be made to tackle the housing crisis.

The research, which Labour said illustrated the need for urgent reforms to donation and transparency rules, showed that between 2010 and 2020, the Conservatives received £60.8m in donations from individuals and companies related to substantial property interests. Of property-related donations to all parties, 80% went to the Tories.

Much of this came from a handful of leading donors, the report found. Over the period of 2015 to 2019, 10% of all donations received by the Tories came from just 10 property-linked sources.

The report noted: “While we have seen insufficient evidence to prove beyond reasonable doubt any direct quid pro quo arrangements of donations for decisions, this dependence creates a real risk of aggregative corruption, whereby the actions and judgments of ministers are incentivised by their party’s financial ties to interest groups in this policy area.”

The group also condemned information about lobbying efforts, saying the level of information provided “falls lamentably short of the mark” when measured against expected standards.

In just three years from 2017 to 2020, the research uncovered, ministers held 669 meetings with 894 different interest groups to discuss housing issues, but in more than 40% of cases departmental information described the subjects being discussed only as “housing” or “planning”.

The statutory register of consultant lobbyists gave additional information on only three of these 894 groups attending the meetings.

Another issue of concern highlighted in the report was the lack of “institutional knowledge” within the government given that in the last 20 years there have been 10 community secretaries or equivalent, and 18 housing ministers, with a similarly high turnover of civil service staff.

Duncan Hames, the policy director at Transparency International UK, said the Conservatives’ reliance on property interests was “of serious concern”, while information about lobbying efforts remained “woefully opaque”.

Anneliese Dodds, the Labour party chair, said the research showed “how the rules around transparency for lobbying ministers aren’t fit for purpose”. She added: “We need to know who is lobbying ministers, what they want from government and what is discussed when they meet.”

A Conservative spokesperson said: “Government policy is in no way influenced by the donations the party receives – they are entirely separate.”

Donations were publicly declared and fully legal, and such fundraising was “a legitimate part of the democratic process”, they said, adding: “The Conservative party is delivering on its manifesto commitments to deliver more homes, with new housing supply having risen to its highest levels for 30 years. Working with the housing industry is an essential part of getting new homes built and regenerating brownfield land.”

The Middlewick Ranges are an ecological marvel by the standards of 21st-century Britain. The army firing range near Colchester, Essex, has been untouched by a plough for nearly 200 years, allowing skylarks and nightingales to feast on the threatened invertebrates and insects that thrive in the rare acid grassland.

James Tapper www.theguardian.com 

Yet a plan to sell off the ranges to build more than 1,000 homes has prompted accusations from campaigners that the Ministry of Defence (MoD) has rewritten environmental protection rules to suit its case.

Acid grassland – named after the acidic soil that supports fine grasses and lichens – has almost disappeared from England, and is protected under guidelines from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra). Planning rules allow developers to build on some types of rare land, including fens, wetland and woodland, so long as they offset the loss by creating replacements. Defra’s Biodiversity Metric allows them to calculate how to do that.

“Under the Defra metric, it says that the score is too high to allow development,” said Richard Martin, from the Save the Middlewick Ranges group. “They couldn’t use it, so they came up with their own one. It’s crazy.”

The MoD’s property arm, the Defence Infrastructure Organisation, agreed the use of a “bespoke metric” with Colchester borough council to push through outline permission to develop the 86 hectare (215-acre) site under the plan. Even worse, according to the campaigners, is how the MoD proposes to replace the acid grassland, by converting farmland nearby.

“They want to put sulphur into the land,” Martin said. “There’s a little brook that runs next to it and all the lands drain into that brook.

“And that flows into Colne Marshes, which is a site of special scientific interest. So you’re going to put sulphur in the rainwater that flows into a SSSI wildlife site.”

The campaigners have been supported by Essex Wildlife Trust, which calls Middlewick Ranges “a major ecological asset” with “precious habitats essential to nature’s recovery”, adding: “We cannot afford to lose them.”

The campaigns resulted in a planning inquiry into how the ranges were added to the local plan, which concluded its hearings earlier this year.

Rosie Pearson, a founder of the Community Planning Alliance, which has advised the campaigners, said: “From a biodiversity perspective, this should be ringing a jumbo alarm bell. The developers couldn’t do what they wanted using the official metric, so they made one up. For the rare species inhabiting the site this could be the death knell – unless the planning inspectorate recognises that what is being attempted is deeply flawed.”

Pearson said developers have been manipulating biodiversity offsetting, adding: “Skylarks are offered ‘offsite plots’ when their meadows are concreted over. Large swathes of ancient woodland have been described as ‘copses’. And arable land is largely dismissed as meaningless for wildlife in the metric.” She said ecological assessments should be done by an independent body, funded by developers, adding: “Local communities should be able to request a second opinion, also funded by the developer, if they have concerns about a report. And government proposals to provide better funding to local authorities for ecology services should be followed through.”

The MoD has defended its plans, saying 63% of the land would be reserved for green open space. It has yet to sell the site to a developer, who would still need planning permission, but if the plan is upheld, opposition would be limited to discussing which parts of the ranges could be built on.

There are more than 460 environmental campaigns across Great Britain according to the Community Planning Alliance, which is concerned that new planning rules – blamed by Tory activists for the Lib Dem victory in the Chesham and Amersham by-election last month – will make it harder for local groups to stop similar developments.

The MoD’s plans rely on a similar project to create acid grassland at the RSPB’s Minsmere reserve in Suffolk.

Adam Rowlands, the RSPB’s Suffolk area manager, who is not involved in Middlewick Ranges dispute, said that creating the acid grassland at Minsmere had taken about 10 years. “It was not an easy task,” he said. “There was quite an intensive period of establishment, scarifying the soils, sowing seed mixes. You can’t just rewild it, otherwise it will turn into scrubland.”

A spokesperson for Colchester borough council said: “Middlewick Ranges is allocated in the Emerging Local Plan for mixed use including housing, open space and community uses.

“The future of the ranges has yet to be finalised, as we continue to await the Local Plan Inspector’s report, but it will be important to ensure residents have an opportunity to comment if the site is included in the Plan.

“Future master planning of the site will need to be undertaken, which will include open space and increased tree-planting, to enhance the biodiversity value of the ranges for future generations of residents to enjoy.

“Whilst we are unable to comment on DIO’s specific plans for the sitethe council remains fully committed to preserving and enhancing all forms of biodiversity in the borough to the greatest extent possible.”

The MoD said: “We continue to work with the council to develop plans for the site, including working with experts to find innovative means to help secure biodiversity. The techniques will be thoroughly tested as part of the examination process.”

Boris Johnson will urge people today not to return to life as normal after July 19 unless they want to risk restrictions being reimposed.

Chris Smyth, Whitehall Editor http://www.thetimes.co.uk

As he confirms that all remaining limits on social contact will be lifted in England a week today, the prime minister will emphasise that “caution is absolutely vital” in the face of rising infections.

Wales is to review its restrictions on Thursday and Scotland is due to lift some restrictions on July 19 and most on August 9.

Senior scientific advisers urged people yesterday to continue to work from home over the summer and not to be “overenthusiastic about social contact” because of the risk of thousands of hospital admissions a day.

Susan Hopkins, of Public Health England, said that no one could “ringingly endorse” the decision to lift all restrictions and the country had to be braced for them to return at short notice if hospital admissions rose too much.

Johnson has dropped claims that the end of restrictions is “irreversible” after scientists warned him that the decision to open up fully was a gamble that could go wrong.

The prime minister will strike a wary tone about life after July 19 as he marks the end of lockdown measures with a plea to carry on with many habits formed during the pandemic.

A government source said that “the best way to make sure we never go back is to be cautious”.

Johnson will say that England is “tantalisingly close to the final milestone in our road map out of lockdown, but the plan to restore our freedoms must come with a warning”.

While praising the success of the vaccination programme, which has “weakened” the link between infections and hospital admissions, he will caution that “the global pandemic is not over yet”.

He will say: “Cases will rise as we unlock, so as we confirm our plans today, our message will be clear. Caution is absolutely vital and we must all take responsibility so we don’t undo our progress, ensuring we continue to protect our NHS.”

Hopkins called the decision to end restrictions now a “fine balancing act”, given that a delay could allow more people to get vaccinated, but would risk pushing an exit wave into the autumn or winter and putting even more pressure on the NHS. “I don’t think we know the right answer,” she told Times Radio.

Sajid Javid, the health secretary, has said that cases could reach 100,000 a day and Hopkins said it was “possible” that this could result in 3,000 hospital admissions a day soon afterwards.

“It will depend on the behaviour that we as individuals and the population overall, do,” she said.

There were 31,772 new cases recorded yesterday. The most recent figures for England show 461 hospital admissions on Wednesday.

Hopkins said that January’s peak of 4,000 admissions a day was “three doubling times away from where we are now, and that it was six to eight weeks potentially, unless things change, and unless we keep the transmission rate down”. Vaccination had more than halved the proportion of cases that end up in hospital but there was still a “direct relationship” between the number of cases and pressure on the NHS, she said.

At present 62 per cent of patients in hospital are under 55 as vaccines protect the elderly. Hopkins said that while vaccination had been “highly successful at reducing hospitalisations, it is not 100 per cent effective”. She said now was “not a time to be over-enthusiastic about social contact”, telling people: “We need to be careful, to keep our distance, keep social contacts low, wear masks in enclosed spaces, despite them not being legally required after July 19.”

The government will drop the recommendation to work from home next week, with ministers insisting that it will be up to businesses to decide whether staff come to the office.

Hopkins said: “Over the next four to six weeks that needs to be very cautiously implemented by businesses to keep transmission down.” She advised: “If you are able to do your business effectively from home then . . . we should try our best to do that.”

Sir David Spiegelhalter, professor of the public understanding of risk at Cambridge University, said that the proportion of people infected who ended up in hospital “has dropped a lot. It used to be in the second wave about one in ten. Now it’s about one in 40 because the cases are so much younger”.

But he told the BBC: “That would mean that a hundred thousand cases, if we got there, would be maybe 2,500 admissions a day. That’s very high.”

Spiegelhalter said that with younger people having shorter stays in wards “the actual numbers in hospital would be well below the second wave peak”.

Like it or not, rolling of the dice is under way already

It has always been, we know, a finely balanced decision (Tom Whipple writes). We are about to find out just how finely balanced. No one is pretending that the modelling accompanying England’s reopening, which is expected to be released today, will make for pleasant reading.

Of course, it never has. For six months the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies has been predicting that there would be a huge exit wave in the summer. The difference is that where once such predictions were treated with derision — how could we have so many cases when nearly all adults are vaccinated? — they are now treated with fatalism.

When the models are published, the key insight will not so much be in its prediction of the size of the coming wave. Everyone knows it will be big. For those who are immuno-compromised, it is clear this summer will not be one of freedom. Instead, the insight will be in the decision-making process — about how much morbidity and mortality the government is prepared to stomach, and how certain it is that both will stay within “acceptable” limits.

As Boris Johnson prepares to formally announce the lifting of all English restrictions, modellers from Warwick, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and Imperial will have already told him how many daily Covid hospital admissions they expect. At the weekend we breached 500. A peak of 1,000 a day seems conservative; 2,000 does not seem inconceivable.

They will also have made it clear we are now rolling the dice. Many scientists vociferously oppose the nation’s acquiescence into mass infection. Others think that, with vaccination falling among the young, with the huge economic costs of social distancing, and with no plans to vaccinate children, it is our only option to reach herd immunity, and delaying opening simply delays deaths. But even that option becomes untenable if the NHS becomes overwhelmed.

In the modellers’ graphs there will be a “confidence interval”, showing the range of likely outcomes. How high will hospital admissions go? Four thousand a day was the figure that nearly toppled the NHS in January. With a backlog of other patients and an exhausted workforce, NHS leaders think even that might be too much.

Last week more than 100 scientists wrote a letter to The Lancet decrying England’s reopening plans as an unethical experiment. They predicted that it would burden the nation with long-Covid-related disability for a generation, create ideal conditions for a vaccine-escape variant, and needlessly cause hundreds, probably thousands, more deaths.

Those points are reasonable, even if some are arguable. But there is a corollary. If mass infection really is an experiment, it is one that has already begun. The relaxation on July 19 might push cases higher but our wave is well under way. If you don’t like 100,000 cases a day, it’s hard to see why 50,000 is acceptable.

If our only goal were to prevent Covid hospital cases, it is clear the best thing would be to reimpose lockdown and start vaccinating teenagers. For reasons of politics, logistics and national exhaustion, that seems highly unlikely.

Six months ago the video of a fractious meeting of the Handforth parish council propelled its attenders – myself included – into the spotlight. I’ve been on quite a journey ever since and while I have mostly enjoyed the ride, I can’t pretend it’s been devoid of bumps or bruises. I’ve tried to learn as much as I can from the rough and the smooth, the peaks and the troughs, and I felt like this was an opportune moment to share some of those lessons.

Jackie Weaver www.theguardian.com

First, the good stuff. I have met some amazing people – from the exotic world of showbusiness to the more familiar environment of local government. Making so many new acquaintances in a short period of time has made me a connoisseur of first and lasting impressions and I can say with confidence that it is people’s kindness, generosity and warmth, not their individual skills or achievements, that has stuck with me. These qualities are memorable because they are powerful. We are social creatures and it is through cooperation, collaboration and compassion that we achieve great things.

But while I have learned a great deal from the kindness and love of strangers, I have also become the unwitting target for trolls and bullies. I should stress that overwhelmingly the interactions I have with people online are positive, friendly and constructive but the abuse is, though infrequent, hard to ignore and impossible to forget. Much of it is sexist in nature – men who don’t like the idea that, as a certain parish councillor might have put it, I “have the authority” to speak on particular matters or share my views. I’ve been told on numerous occasions to shut up, pipe down or get lost. People sometimes comment on my appearance (as if it were relevant) or remind me that fame can be fleeting (as if I weren’t aware). One individual, who will have to remain anonymous, has taken to contacting me on a regular basis to tell me that they have seen through my facade to the calculating, toxic and manipulative individual that supposedly lies beneath.

In writing this, I acknowledge that the abuse I have received has neither been as relentless nor intimidating as that experienced by many women in the public eye, especially women of colour. But it has served as a salutary reminder that we must relentlessly defend the basic values of compassion, inclusion and cooperation: though the trolls may be few in number, their voices are loud and uncompromising. We must not allow this to become normal.

Which leads me to my recommendations for revitalising the soul of our body politic.

First, we have to tackle online abuse. The online safety bill that will soon be progressing through parliament couldbecome a landmark piece of legislation – a world first – in addressing this scourge. To be effective, it needs to significantly reduce the number and reach of anonymous social media accounts (the source of most misinformation and hate online) and enforce a new duty of care on social media sites towards their users. These platforms have, for too long, benefited from a laissez-faire system of governance that has allowed misinformation and abuse to spread with impunity. The government needs to catch up.

Second, we should substantially enhance the standards of behaviour expected of local and national politicians. Two quick and effective changes could help to make this happen. It should become the norm – enforced by legal action if necessary – that local councillors either resign or are removed from their post for a fixed period if they are found to have contravened their authority’s code of conduct. No such provision exists and, as I have documented before, this means that councillors found guilty of racism, sexism or homophobia can continue in their role. This unconscionable practice legitimises bad behaviour, low standards and poor governance. If we are to attract a wider demographic to stand in elections, we must redouble our efforts to make the environment they enter as safe as possible.

Further, I would like to see a law introduced to tackle lying in politics at every level. Compassion in Politics, for which I am an ambassador, is campaigning to make it illegal for politicians to wilfully and repeatedly lie to the public. Given the serious nature of their position and the responsibilities they have to the public, the least we can expect is that politicians will be honest, open and transparent.

Last, I think we should be looking to nurture an ethos of compassion, inclusion and kindness in every level of society, in every aspect of our economy, and in every layer of government. These are the values that have helped to save and protect lives through the Covid crisis and brightened the darkest of our days. We should bring compassion training into schools and workplaces and devolve more power, autonomy and resources to local communities. We cannot expect to resolve complicated problems such as pandemics, climate breakdown and inequality if we fight among ourselves. Take it from someone who has met many new people in the past few months – kindness and compassion are more likely to win you friends and influence than their opposites.

• Jackie Weaver is chief officer of Cheshire Association of Local Councils and an ambassador of Compassion in Politics

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Covid restrictions will probably need to be reimposed across England after summer but the government may again delay doing so, a Conservative MP helping lead a Commons inquiry into ministers’ handling of the pandemic has warned.

Aubrey Allegretti www.theguardian.com 

Dr Dan Poulter, who has also been working on the NHS frontline since the outbreak began, said “challenging mutations” of the virus would probably emerge and set back a “return to normality” until at least 2022.

Boris Johnson is expected to announce on Monday that most legal constraints will be scrapped from 19 July, as part of a pivot to telling people they must learn to live with the disease.

Poulter, a vice-chair of the all-party parliamentary group (APPG) on coronavirus, said there was “a sense of worry” about the full unlocking, particularly about the risk that many young people – most of whom are not yet fully vaccinated – could develop long Covid.

With the number of cases rising to levels not seen since January this year, he said a “greater pool of the virus” meant “a higher chance of mutation occurring” and a variant emerging that was much better at evading current vaccines.

Infections could soon reach 100,000 a day, the new health secretary, Sajid Javid, recently said – a substantially higher figure than the 68,053 recorded on 8 January 2021.

Layla Moran, the Lib Dem MP who chairs the APPG, also said she thought ministers had not learned crucial lessons and that her group – set up to scrutinise the government’s decisions and save lives – could be needed for another four years.

After it was set up last July, 73 MPs and peers from eight Westminster political parties came together to hold 25 oral evidence sessions and make more than 50 recommendations to ministers.

Moran said the government was “playing Russian roulette” by gambling on the outcome of the pandemic, and voiced concern that some form of lockdown might be needed in the autumn.

She said people could die unnecessarily if the unlocking turned out to have been “reckless”. “It pays to not assume you’ve got ahead of the virus, because it seems to always get a toehold at the moment that you think you’re on the path to beating it,” Moran said.

Her caution was echoed by Poulter, who said he anticipated a “challenging winter” with the combined pressures of Covid and flu. “The idea that we are fully done with restrictions, I would suggest, is unrealistic,” he said.

“It’s a matter of some concern when people are talking about a return to normality, when we have enough evidence from the last 18 months that we’re going to have to be living with the virus for a lot longer.”

Asked whether he was concerned the government could delay introducing tougher measures – as Johnson did last autumn, against the advice of his scientific advisers – Poulter said it was indeed an anxiety.

“As is inevitably the case with governments … going into reverse gear or changing direction is sometimes quite difficult,” he said. “But I hope that if the data and the evidence suggests that we need to reintroduce restrictions, which I fear it may well, that the government will listen to the chief medical officer and follow the data.”