A bit of catch-up news with implications on the whole of the newly announced road building programme. 

Matthew Taylor  www.theguardian.com

Campaigners have launched a legal challenge to try to prevent billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money being spent on a huge road-building programme, which they say breaches the UK’s legal commitments to tackle the climate crisis and air pollution.

Lawyers acting for the Transport Action Network (Tan) have begun legal proceedings against the Department for Transport calling for the road-building scheme, which was confirmed last month by the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, to be suspended.

They argue that ministers did not take into account the government’s legally binding commitment to reach net zero emissions by 2050. They also say the government has not considered whether the £27bn programme is in line with its obligations under the Paris climate agreement.

The move follows a successful challenge to the proposed third runway at Heathrow. In that case the court ruled that the planned airport expansion was illegal because ministers did not adequately take into account the government’s commitments to tackle the climate crisis.

The road-building programme is thought to be the UK’s largest and would lead to thousands of miles of new roads being built across the country in the coming years – with at least 50 projects due to be under way in the next two years.

The UK’s road network and its wider transport infrastructure are crucial in the country’s efforts to avoid the worst impacts of the climate crisis. The transport sector is the biggest emitter of greenhouse gases and the only one to have increased its emissions in recent years.

Chris Todd, Tan’s director, said it was impossible to take the government seriously on the threat posed by climate change when it is “set to burn billions on the largest ever roads programme”.

“This massive roads programme has become like a juggernaut that’s out of control, that no one can stop. We now have no choice but to go to court to prevent an unfolding disaster.”

Tan wrote to the secretary of state following the court of appeal’s Heathrow decision in February requesting a pause in the road-building programme to allow time to reconsider its environmental effects. It said it did not receive a response to that letter. Lawyers have sent a pre-action protocol letter that is the official start of legal proceedings.

Rowan Smith, from the solicitors Leigh Day, which is pursuing the case on behalf of Tan, said the group was raising “legitimate concerns” at a time when it was widely established that the climate emergency “demands a move away from a continued reliance on fossil fuels towards more sustainable transport”.

The government’s climate change adviser has joined calls for ministers to reconsider its road-building plans.

Chris Stark, the head of the Committee on Climate Change, said it would be better for the economy and the fight against climate breakdown for the billions of pounds allocated for road-building to be invested in broadband – especially in light of the coronavirus crisis, which has led to many more people working from home.

“The government mustn’t be investing in anything likely to increase carbon emissions,” Stark told the BBC. “I expect that video-conferencing will become the new normal and we won’t return to travelling the way we did. I would spend the roads budget on fibre. You would get a huge return to the economy with people having better connections. You would save people’s time and increase their productivity.”

His comments echo those of the head of the motoring organisation the AA, who said this month that government money would be better invested in broadband than roads.

In response to the legal challenge, a spokesperson for the Department for Transport defended its plans. “The second road investment strategy is consistent with our ambitions to improve air quality and decarbonise transport,” they said. “We have received the letter and will respond formally in due course.’’

This news on the scaling down of the Exeter Nightingale comes soon after news that the Dyson contract to provide 10,000 ventilators is to be cancelled. This in turn follows cancellation of the formula 1 team’s BlueSky ventilator a couple of weeks ago, the specification of which turned out not to be suitable for Covid patients. Not forgetting the millions wasted on testing kits that didn’t work well enough.

The scaling back on the perceived need for intensive beds is good news, bearing in mind the South West has the lowest ratio of such beds to “normal” needs. Looks like the older population took social isolation and distancing seriously and acted on the instructions quickly. 

The Government has been desperately trying to play catch-up, having been caught unprepared for the scale of the pandemic. So it’s not surprising that we should see surplus in some things while experiencing shortages in others. 

In retrospect, the article “The UK needs more ventilators and fast. But the maths doesn’t add up” illustrates the confusion at the time.

Howard Lloyd www.devonlive.com

The NHS Nightingale hospital which was supposed to be built in Exeter to help combat the coronavirus pandemic will no longer be at Westpoint Arena, it has been announced.

It was decided that a site the size of Westpoint was not required due to the lower-than-expected transmission rates of COVID-19 in the South West.

Instead, NHS Nightingale Exeter will be at a ‘former Homebase store’, where construction will begin in the next few days.

The home improvement retailer’s branch in the Sowton area of Exeter closed in September 2018, although it has not yet been confirmed that this is the site in question.

A statement from the NHS Devon Clinical Commissioning Group said: “The NHS’ newest hospital will now be built on the site of a former retail unit on the outskirts of the city.

“Earlier plans had indicated that this hospital would be based at Westpoint.

“However, having carefully considered the value which Westpoint brings to the community north of Exeter, and the disruption it could cause to its everyday operations, we have used the time available to us to consider alternatives.

“We are very grateful to the charity which runs Westpoint for their help, hard work, and kindness in welcoming us over the last ten days as we considered our decision.”

DevonLive revealed at the start of April that Westpoint had been chosen for the new hospital – news which was confirmed by the Government a week later.

The temporary hospital was due to be the smallest of the seven temporary hospitals being set up across the country.

The British Army was helping the NHS and private contractors to prepare the site which was meant to be ready by early May and provide up to 400 extra beds.

“Westpoint have been nothing less than exemplary and were the first to heed the call,” said Dr Michael Marsh, Regional Medical Director for the NHS in the South West.

“They understand why we have made the decision and support us in doing the best we can for patients.”

The new hospital will be a regional facility providing care and treatment for patients from Devon, Cornwall, Dorset and Somerset.

The NHS Devon Clinical Commissioning Group said that the ‘lower than expected COVID-19 transmission rates in the SW combined with updated modelling of care needs also shows that a smaller site would be a better use of resources, and enable the NHS in the South West to use the site for a longer period of time if needed’.

Conversion of the former Homebase store will begin over the next few days, with help from the army and contractors BAM Construct Ltd, who also built the NHS Nightingale Hospital in Harrogate.

The NHS Nightingale Exeter brings the total to seven confirmed NHS Nightingale Hospitals in a matter of weeks, with others in Bristol, Birmingham, Harrogate, London, Manchester and Sunderland.

“Step down” hospital, “Recovery” hospital – sounds like a substitute for the old fashioned cottage hospital to Owl.   

Richard Whitehouse www.cornwalllive.com

A patient staying at one of three hotels in Cornwall which have been designated as ‘step down’ hospitals cried tears of joy in appreciation for his carers.

The St Moritz Hotel near Rock has joined The Carnmarth Hotel in Newquay, Penventon Hotel in Redruth to be used as recuperation centres.

They are hosting patients who are recovering from operations or Covid-19 but are not strong enough to return home.

By taking them to the hotels the Royal Cornwall Hospitals Trust has been able to free up beds at Treliske.

Cornwall Council chief executive Kate Kennally said yesterday: “These are working really well with people staying at the hotels being very appreciative of the care and support they are receiving.

“One guest broke down in tears of joy. He stayed in a room overlooking Fistral Beach and the sun was setting over the sea. He broke down in tears and expressed his appreciation to the health and care he was receiving.”

Ms Kennally added that through this scheme and others being carried out between the council and health care providers “our partnership has never been so strong”.

In a statement it was confirmed that the St Moritz Hotel has been designated as a recuperation centre until mid June for patients from north Cornwall.

All three hotels are using specialist staff provided by Cornwall Council-owned company Corserv and the NHS in Cornwall.

St Moritz proprietor Hugh Ridgway said: “With the hotel closed and in abject frustration at being unable to do anything two weeks ago I got in touch with Scott Mann, MP, and offered St Moritz as an emergency facility for the NHS. The response was immediate. Numerous inspections later we are delighted to be open and receiving our first patients as a ‘step down hospital’.

“Operated by Cornwall Care we are already in awe of their staff – their dedication and professionalism is quite humbling.

“I hugely thank the St Moritz staff who have volunteered to help this enterprise with all the support services that are required – three meals a day, administration, housekeeping, maintenance etc. It is a great thing they are doing to help prosecute the war against this dreadful virus.

“Ministers were warned last year the UK must have a robust plan to deal with a pandemic virus and its potentially catastrophic social and economic consequences in a confidential Cabinet Office briefing leaked to the Guardian.”

“The recommendations within it included the need to stockpile PPE (personal protective equipment), organise advanced purchase agreements for other essential kit, establish procedures for disease surveillance and contact tracing, and draw up plans to manage a surge in excess deaths.”

“Having plans for helping British nationals abroad and repatriating them to the UK was also flagged as a priority.”

Nick Hopkins  www.theguardian.com 

Ministers were warned last year the UK must have a robust plan to deal with a pandemic virus and its potentially catastrophic social and economic consequences in a confidential Cabinet Office briefing leaked to the Guardian.

The detailed document warned that even a mild pandemic could cost tens of thousands of lives, and set out the must-have “capability requirements” to mitigate the risks to the country, as well as the potential damage of not doing so.

It comes as the UK’s hospital death toll from coronavirus heads towards 20,000. Less than a month ago, the medical director at NHS England, Prof Stephen Powis, said the country would “have done very well” to stay below this grim milestone.

Marked “official, sensitive”, the 2019 National Security Risk Assessment (NSRA) was signed off by Sir Patrick Vallance, the government’s chief scientific adviser, as well as a senior national security adviser to the prime minister whom the Guardian has been asked not to name.

The recommendations within it included the need to stockpile PPE (personal protective equipment), organise advanced purchase agreements for other essential kit, establish procedures for disease surveillance and contact tracing, and draw up plans to manage a surge in excess deaths.

Having plans for helping British nationals abroad and repatriating them to the UK was also flagged as a priority.

All of these areas have come under relentless scrutiny since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, with the government accused of being too slow to react to the crisis. It is now under sustained pressure to provide answers about what was done nationally and locally to provide the support that planners have long called for, amid growing fears ministers were “caught out” by the crisis and have been playing catchup ever since.

The Cabinet Office document, which runs to more than 600 pages, not only analysed the risk of a viral flu pandemic but also specifically addressed the potential for a coronavirus outbreak (the earlier Sars and Mers were both coronaviruses), though it regarded this as potentially much less damaging. In reality, the UK is dealing with a hybrid of the two, raising further questions about whether ministers were quick enough to recognise the dangers and were able to rely on whatever preparations were already in place.

Drawing on previous security assessments and health risk registers, the document implicitly warned ministers they could not afford to be complacent. “A novel pandemic virus could be both highly transmissible and highly virulent,” it said. “Therefore, pandemics significantly more serious than the reasonable worst case … are possible.”

The government declined to provide specific details of the preparations that had been made prior to the pandemic, but said it would be unfair to say they were “starting from scratch”, pointing to planning exercises carried out in recent years.

“This is an unprecedented global pandemic and we have taken the right steps at the right time to combat it, guided at all times by the best scientific advice,” a government spokesman said.

“The government has been proactive in implementing lessons learned around pandemic preparedness. This includes being ready with legislative proposals that could rapidly be tailored to what became the Coronavirus Act, plans to strengthen excess death planning, planning for recruitment and deployment of retired staff and volunteers, and guidance for stakeholders and sectors across government.”

But one source with knowledge of the Cabinet Office document said the UK had not properly focused on the pandemic threat, and had been caught flat-footed.

“The really frustrating thing is that there were plans. But over the last few years emergency planning has been focused on political drivers, like Brexit and flooding.

“There was a national plan for dealing with a pandemic that should have been implemented. But who took control of that? And who was responsible for making sure that plans were being made at a local level? The truth is, I am not sure anyone was doing this.”

The source added: “We have been paying for a third-party fire and theft insurance for a pandemic, not a comprehensive one. We have been caught out.”

The shadow Cabinet Office minister, Rachel Reeves, said the revelations were “alarming … and raised serious questions about the government’s planning and preparedness for a coronavirus-style pandemic”.

She demanded her opposite number, Michael Gove, give a statement to parliament on Monday to explain “whether this report was read and what actions were taken”.

The NSRA sets out a series of potential reasonable worst case scenarios (RWCS) for the spread of a flu-like viral pandemic, which emergency planning experts regard as the benchmark for its preparedness in the current crisis.

It also included predictions that offer insights into how planners believe a crisis like this current emergency might evolve.

The document said:

• A pandemic would play out in up to “three waves”, with each wave expected to last 15 weeks … “with the peak weeks occurring at weeks 6 and 7 in each wave”.
• 50% of the population would be infected and experience symptoms of pandemic influenza during the one or more waves. The actual number of people infected would be higher than this, as there would be a number of asymptomatic cases.
• A pandemic of moderate virulence could lead to 65,600 deaths.
• The potential cost to the UK could be £2.35tn.
• Even after the end of the pandemic, it is likely that it would take months or even years for health and social care services to recover.
• There would be significant public outrage over any perceived poor handling of the government’s preparations and response to the emergency.

Whitehall sources concede that turning “plans on the page to real life” was always proving a challenge, but said that in some respects the Brexit planning had helped.

The government spokesman said its response to the emergency had protected lives and businesses: “Our response has ensured that the NHS has been given all the support it needs to ensure everyone requiring treatment has received it, as well as providing protection to businesses and reassurance to workers.”

But political pressure is mounting on the government. On Wednesday, the Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer, demanded ministers explain why “we were slow into lockdown, slow on testing, slow on protective equipment”.

In an interview with the BBC on Thursday, Dame Deirdre Hine, who produced a report for government on the swine-flu pandemic, said she feared the government had not implemented the plans for a pandemic. “I think they have been complacent,” she said.

A very serious warning for all Owl’s followers:

The maker of Dettol has said its product should not be ingested “under any circumstances” after Donald Trump suggested tests should be carried out to see if COVID-19 patients could be injected with disinfectant.

Ian Collier News reporter news.sky.com 

In a statement, RB said since the US president’s remarks it had been asked if “internal administration of disinfectants” could be used to treat coronavirus patients.

“As a global leader in health and hygiene products, we must be clear that under no circumstance should our disinfectant products be administered into the human body (through injection, ingestion or any other route).

“As with all products, our disinfectant and hygiene products should only be used as intended and in line with usage guidelines. Please read the label and safety information.”

Mr Trump made his remarks after one of his officials gave a presentation on the impacts of bleach and sunlight on coronavirus and how it reacts to different temperatures and surfaces, during Thursday’s White House task force briefing.

news.sky.com /story/coronavirus-trump-under-fire-for-suggesting-disinfectant-as-covid-19-treatment-11977958

“So, supposing we hit the body with a tremendous, whether it’s ultraviolet or just very powerful light, and I think you said that has not been checked but you’re going to test it,” he said.

“And then I said, supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way. And I think you said you’re going to test that, too, sounds interesting

“Right, and then I see the disinfectant, it knocks it out in a minute, one minute and is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside or or almost a cleaning, ’cause you see it gets on the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs.

“So it will also be interesting to check that so you’re gonna have to use medical doctors. But it sounds, it sounds interesting to me so we’ll see. But the whole concept of the light, the way it goes in and one minute, that’s – that’s pretty powerful.”

At one point, he turned to Dr Deborah Birx, the co-ordinator of the White House coronavirus task force, and asked her to speak with doctors “to see if there’s any way that you can apply light and heat to cure”.

“Maybe you can, maybe you can’t,” he said: “I’m not a doctor. I am a person that has a good, you know what,” he added while pointing to his head.

The president was already facing criticism for championing hydroxychloroquine as a possible cure for COVID-19, which has been shown to provide no benefit and possibly a higher risk of death.

Doctors immediately warned against the unproven idea, blasting it as “irresponsible” and “dangerous”, and said it could kill people.

.”..there is no official word to explain clearly why the Republic of Ireland, which has followed WHO advice, records a death rate a third lower than that in Northern Ireland, which follows UK advice. Such are the delusions of national character that too many members of the government, from the prime minister down, suffer from. People are dying. It is time to give up on the fantasies of British exceptionalism.”

Editorial  www.theguardian.com 

The Guardian view on following viral science: why did we go it alone?

If there is a simple way of showing how out of step this government is with the rest of the world on coronavirus, it can be found in the gap last week between the five criteria that Dominic Raab said the country must fulfil before the lockdown was lifted and the six tests the World Health Organization set. Missing from Mr Raab’s list was that health system capacities ought to be “in place to detect, test, isolate and treat every case and trace every contact”.

What divides these two approaches is the “science”, which is why claims of following it ring so empty. On one side we have those who believe that testing, tracing and the isolating of infected individuals is needed to defeat coronavirus. In this camp are public health experts such as Anthony Costello of University College London and Jeremy Hunt, the former health secretary.

They have facts on their side. South Korea registered its first 10 deaths of patients with Covid-19 by 25 February, and by following the WHO’s advice Seoul had suppressed the epidemic within 22 days. Prof Costello says that by the time the UK had recorded its first 10 deaths, by 13 March, the government had stopped all testing and contact-tracing in the community. How has that gone? South Korea sees 17 new cases daily, while the UK records 5,000. These numbers convinced the health secretary, Matt Hancock, who on Thursday outlined his “test, track and trace” strategy, which would start “as the new number of cases begins to fall”.

On the other side are those who believed the UK ought to go it alone – with a response determined by mathematical models and control measures while waiting for the silver bullet of a vaccine. In this camp appeared to be Mr Raab, the chief medical officer, Chris Whitty, and his deputy, Jenny Harries, who condescendingly claimed South Korea’s outbreak was atypical and akin to controlling that found in a single care home. Sir Patrick Vallance’s promotion of “some kind of herd immunity” put him, as chief scientific adviser, at odds with public health doctors. The evidence suggests that was also the case for Dominic Cummings, the prime minister’s chief adviser, who has long been entranced by computational modelling “fast enough for epidemic ‘war games’”.

Sir Patrick chairs the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies which last month warned that “if interventions that are perceived to be effective [in other countries] are not applied [in the UK]”, then this would increase “the risk of public concern”. Sage recommended “a clear explanation as to why expected interventions are not being implemented”.

Yet there is no official word to explain clearly why the Republic of Ireland, which has followed WHO advice, records a death rate a third lower than that in Northern Ireland, which follows UK advice. Such are the delusions of national character that too many members of the government, from the prime minister down, suffer from. People are dying. It is time to give up on the fantasies of British exceptionalism.

East Devon Reporter eastdevonnews.co.uk 

Residents are being urged to avoid having a spring declutter as recycling centres in East Devon and Exeter will only reopen when ‘it is safe to do so’.  

Nineteen facilities across the county were shut on March 24 after the UK went into coronavirus lockdown.

They include hubs in Exmouth, Sidmouth and Honiton, as well as Exton Road and Pinbrook Road in Exeter.

Devon County Council (DCC) said today it is looking to reopen recycling centres ‘as soon as it is safe to do so and [the]Government guidance permits’.

“Until that time residents are urged to avoid having a spring declutter or undertake home improvements that may create extra waste,” added the authority.

‘Please be patient’

Councillor Andrea Davis, cabinet member for infrastructure, development and waste, added: “It’s understandable that people have more time on their hands and want to keep busy, but it does push extra waste onto already stretched services, especially as recycling centres remain closed.

“We are looking to reopen these facilities as soon as it is safe and government guidance allows.

“Until that time I ask that people to please be patient and store excess waste or wait until restrictions are lifted. It would help keep collection services running smoothly.

“It’s easy to generate more waste and recycling while we’re at home and it’s great to see that most people a continuing to recycle as much as possible and keep waste to manageable levels under difficult circumstances.

“I want to thank everyone for doing their bit and for supporting the crews as they continue the important task of collecting our rubbish and recycling.”

East Devon support for refuse crews

Households across Devon have been thanked for their waste and recycling efforts during the pandemic.

Support for collection crews has included pictures and ‘thank you’ notes left on bins and outbreaks of spontaneous doorstep applause.

East Devon District Council said its refuse collection staff had been ‘cheered’ by a campaign to celebrate their hard work.

“A whole series of posters and messages have greeted the refuse collectors during their deliveries,” added a spokesperson.

“Your cheers for our staff have been much appreciated.”

Waste and recycling tips

DCC has issued the following advice to households:

• Your bin may be collected earlier or later than usual due to collection round changes. Find out what time your bin should go out here to avoid a missed collection;
•  If your car is parked on the street, make sure there is room for a collection vehicle (or emergency service vehicle) to pass;
• Keep hold of clean and wearable textiles and shoes until restrictions are lifted, when charities will urgently need your donations;
  Wash, squash and flatten your recyclables to increase the capacity of your recycling bin, box or bag;
• Start home composting your uncooked food, peelings and garden waste from as little as £13. Buy a compost bin here or build your own from pallets. Alternatively, leave grass cuttings on the lawn to return nutrients to the soil;
• Think about your food waste. Find recipes to effectively use up ingredients via our FREE online recipe book “Have your food and eat it”;
• Residents showing Covid-19 symptoms are advised to store recyclables for 72 hours before placing in the regular recycling container. Any personal waste, such as tissues, need to be double bagged and then stored for 72 hours before being placed in the residual waste bin.

More information is available on the Recycle Devon website.

Daniel Clark  www.devonlive.com

The majority of parks and gardens in East Devon are set to be reopened – but will close again if people don’t use common sense and abide by social distancing guidelines.

East Devon District Council last month decided to close parks to help people abide by social distancing measures following the Government’s lockdown announced.

The council added that the decision was balanced by the fact that East Devon is a rural district with good access to the countryside and open spaces.

But following the statement made by the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government on Saturday, April 18, who said: “People need parks. That’s why I have made it clear to councils that all parks must remain open,” the council has reviewed its initial decision.

The cabinet have agreed that the majority of the district’s large or easy to access park sites should be reopened to the public, as soon as possible, but some small sites with restricted access/egress points will remain closed in order to support Government’s social distancing guidance

Cllr Geoff Jung, East Devon’s Portfolio for the Environment, said: “We believe we can safely re-open large parks sites, such as Phear Park in Exmouth, with access points, open borders or space that allow people to easily use the site for exercise while maintaining social distancing.

“We will re-open these sites by removing barriers and closure signage starting Thursday, April 23. It will take us a couple of days to complete this.

“This will mean that the majority of our parks will be open, giving residents ample green spaces within which to exercise responsibly. Social distancing signs will remain in place and we will remind the public to observe these measures.

“If people do not observe social distancing or congregate in our Parks, we may be forced to close them all again.

“So we are putting our trust in our public and asking them to use common sense, follow the two metre social distancing recommendations and generally take responsibility for staying safe.”

A council spokesman added that as it would be difficult for the public to maintain robust social distancing in the following sites, and so as not to increase the risk of viral transmission, these sites are to remain closed.

They are:

• Manor Gardens – Exmouth
• Gunfield Gardens – Exmouth
• Queens Drive Space – Exmouth
• The Glen – Honiton
• Connaught Gardens – Sidmouth
• Blackmore Gardens – Sidmouth
• Seafield Gardens – Seaton
• All play areas
• Outdoor gym equipment
• All skate parks

The spokesman added: “Due to restrictions in East Devon staffing levels, resulting from the virus lockdown, the council will not be able to maintain the parks and gardens to the same high standards as they were before closure.

“However, from a positive environmental perspective, East Devon has already started a programme of actively re-wilding areas, encouraging biodiversity and wildflowers and cutting grass less frequently and this will continue. Those using the parks for exercise can expect to see meadow length grass with access paths cut through it as a more prominent feature.

“The council will only be able to conduct visual walkover inspections of its sites as staff are focussed on maintaining core operations services, self-isolating or restricted from travelling due to health reasons.”

Further guidance on what people should do when accessing East Devon’s parks can be found at: https://eastdevon.gov.uk/parks-gardens-and-recreation/parks-and-gardens/coronavirus-information/

In a previous post discussing exit strategies and some of the strongly held views, Owl said “it might be wise to watch and see what happens in other nations, further down the path. (The USA will be an interesting wild-card to follow).” This now  proves to be the case as Georgia frees up the “land of the free”. An interesting experiment especially given strained Georgia’s starting point. 

Demetri Sevastopulo in Washington and Hannah Murphy in San Francisco April 21 2020 www.ft.com

Georgia and several other southern US states are moving to ease lockdown restrictions as early as this week, as sporadic protests erupt in other states over the strict measures governors have enacted to tackle coronavirus.

Brian Kemp, the Republican governor of Georgia, said residents could visit gyms, hair salons, tattoo parlours and bowling alleys from Friday, and could then start going to movie theatres and restaurants from Monday.

Henry McMaster, South Carolina’s Republican governor, rescinded a ban on residents going to the beach and eased restrictions on retail outlets to let them reopen if they implement social distancing measures. Bill Lee, the Republican governor of Tennessee, said his stay-at-home order would lapse at the end of April.

Mr Kemp was one of the last governors to impose a lockdown and his move makes his state one of the first to ease restrictions. Georgia has not met the criteria outlined by the White House last week when it recommended that a state see a decline in cases for 14 days before starting to reopen.

The move was slammed by two Democrats — Stacey Abrams, the former minority leader in the Georgia legislature, and Keisha Lance Bottom, the Atlanta mayor — who are both possible running mates for Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.

Ms Abrams said the decision was “dangerously incompetent”. Ms Lance urged Atlanta residents to continue to stay at home. Mr Kemp came under intense criticism earlier this month when he acknowledged that he had not realised that people who had no symptoms could still be carrying the virus.

The moves to open some states came as Facebook said it would remove pages promoting anti-lockdown protests that did not adhere to social distancing guidelines. The company took the decision as a spate of public rallies opposed to the coronavirus measures continued across the US. 

Facebook said it would take down content organising anti-quarantine protests if they sought to defy social distancing rules in US states. It has already removed content in California, Nebraska and New Jersey, but said events that include clear calls for social distancing would be permitted.

Small protests have erupted sporadically in recent days as a combination of far-right groups and supporters of President Donald Trump have targeted the governors of states, most Democratic-led, with the more severe lockdowns.

Several hundred people protested outside the Pennsylvania state capitol building in Harrisburg on Monday against lockdown measures introduced by Tom Wolf, the Democratic governor. Mr Wolf announced on Monday that the state’s stay-at-home order would be extended until May 8. 

Some of the protesters have been emboldened by Mr Trump, who last week urged followers in a tweet to “liberate” Michigan, Minnesota and Virginia — all states with Democratic governors, such as Pennsylvania.

On Sunday Mr Trump refused to condemn the protesters despite the fact that many are not practising the social distancing guidelines that his own administration has recommended should remain in effect for now.

Mr Trump said they were “great people” who had “cabin fever” and that they had the right to protest, particularly because some of the governors, including Gretchen Whitmer in Michigan, had gone too far.

As it enforces its policy, Facebook said it had contacted state officials to better understand the scope of their orders related to social distancing.

The social media company is battling to crack down on the false information and conspiracy theories related to coronavirus that are rapidly spreading on the platform. It also announced a new tool last week that informs users if they have interacted with dangerous Covid-19 misinformation on the platform.

At the same time, Facebook risks charges of censorship if it is seen to prevent political discourse — at a time when it already faces accusations of anticonservative bias. 

In Pennsylvania on Monday cars and trucks honked their horns as protesters, some holding placards that backed Mr Trump, waved American flags and called on Mr Wolf to ease stay-at-home restrictions.

The lockdown has been especially devastating to Pennsylvania’s economy, in part because Mr Wolf moved earlier than most governors to order the closure of non-essential businesses in his state to curb coronavirus. 

Pennsylvania has recorded almost 34,000 cases of Covid-19, the fourth-highest total in the country. The number of people who have died has hit 1,348, giving the rust-belt state, the fifth-highest death toll in the US.

Larry Hogan, the Republican governor of Maryland, who chairs the National Governors Association, questioned why Mr Trump was encouraging dangerous behaviour against the advice of his health experts. Last week Mr Trump introduced a plan to reopen the country that urged states to start resuming normal activity only after a 14-day drop in cases.

Mr Hogan on Sunday told the television news channel CNN that many of the states where the protests were occurring, including Maryland, had not yet hit that target.

“To encourage people to go protest the plan that you just made recommendations . . . just doesn’t make any sense,” Mr Hogan said.

“The understudy prime minister is exposing many of the structural flaws that characterise Boris Johnson’s government.” We also have an Opposition Leader who can forensically hold the Government to account. 

Editorial www.theguardian.com

Dominic Raab’s tenure as Brexit secretary in 2018 was short and fruitless. He negotiated nothing in Brussels and resigned in protest, as if the failure was not his own. It is worth recalling that record now because Mr Raab has temporarily risen to the highest office, which is higher than his capabilities should allow.

Acting as prime minister during Boris Johnson’s illness is an unenviable task. The stand-in did not take decisions he must now defend, and has no executive authority to fix mistakes. Mr Johnson’s absence can be felt as drift and incoherence, expressed most potently in confusion over coronavirus testing and supplies of vital medical equipment.

Keir Starmer raised both subjects in his Commons debut as Labour leader on Wednesday. On both fronts he exposed the void where Mr Raab must have wished he had answers. The foreign secretary floundered most under questioning on testing, where the rate lags far behind what would be necessary to hit the target of 100,000 per day by the end of this month. He attempted a sleight of hand, defending the government’s record in terms of elevated testing capacity, an easier metric and not what had initially been pledged. Mr Starmer’s efficiency in identifying and dismissing that trick bodes well for when it is Mr Johnson at the despatch box and not his understudy.

On equipment supplies, Mr Raab’s defence was propped up by two flimsy planks: first, that no country is managing without difficulty; second, that every decision has been taken in accordance with the best available scientific advice. If there was ever merit in those claims it has worn thin from overuse by ministers evading responsibility for the lethal consequences of their actions – and inaction. It is disingenuous and improbable to suggest that ministers have followed a technocratic template, impeded only by logistical challenges beyond their control. Political prejudice infiltrates most decisions in government and Mr Johnson’s Downing Street is one of the most ideologically driven, politically cynical administrations in British history. It is likely that medical expertise was heeded, given that no one in the cabinet had relevant qualifications, but the equivalent skills deficit in other areas has never stopped the prime minister from having a strong opinion and acting on it before. Brexit is a case in point, where decisions of national importance were routinely taken in disregard of advice from people with professional expertise in the relevant fields.

It is plausible that the scale of the coronavirus threat forced ministers to set ideology aside. The Treasury response demonstrates that much in its swift abandonment of orthodox Conservative fiscal policy. But it is also feasible that Mr Johnson and his team took longer than necessary to climb out of some ideological trenches because they had dug themselves in so deep. That lag might help clear up confusion surrounding an EU procurement scheme for medical equipment, which Britain either joined or did not join for reasons that mysteriously vary depending on whether it is a civil servant, a minister or Brussels accounting for events.

On Tuesday, a senior foreign office official told a parliamentary committee that the decision not to participate had been political. Hours later he “clarified” to the contrary, but his written retraction contained no clarification of facts. The truth will surely emerge one day, probably in front of a public inquiry.

Meanwhile, the episode reinforces the impression of a government that was ill prepared for a crisis that demanded competence more than rhetorical bluster, and is failing now to get sufficient grip and undo damage done. Partly that is a symptom of over-centralisation and reliance on the individual authority of the prime minister, whose focus is necessarily elsewhere. But capable ministers and a resilient administration would be compensating better for Mr Johnson’s absence. That they are not, that the whole system seems obviously adrift, running on bluster and improvisation, testifies to flaws. Mr Raab is obviously out of his depth. Sadly, it seems his painfully shrunken stature is an accurate measure of the government he currently leads.

The development of a smartphone app to help identify infection contacts (now being tested by RAF personnel) has long been trailed. This article suggests that similar preparations have not been made to conduct the low tech, but tried and tested, solution the rest of us have seen coming for week.

Charlie Cooper and Ashleigh Furlong www.politico.eu 

LONDON — Doctors and public health experts warn the U.K. faces significant logistical hurdles if it plans to use mass coronavirus testing and contact tracing to help ease its lockdown.

This comes as Health Secretary Matt Hancock set out the government’s plans to roll out an army of 18,000 contact tracers in a matter of weeks. “This test, tract and trace will be vital to stop a second peak of the virus,” he said, during the daily press conference on Thursday.

Britain initially attempted to test those suspected of having the virus and trace their contacts early in the epidemic but then abandoned the approach, with health experts saying mass testing was “not appropriate” for the U.K.

Hancock has since pushed to rapidly increase the U.K.’s testing capacity, which currently stands at just under half of the target of 100,000 tests a day by the end of the month.

However, while welcoming the shift in strategy experts warned that the U.K. is starting from a low baseline to deliver on the plan, following a period in which public health budgets have been cut by over £700 million in real terms between 2015-17 and 2019-20.

Those drafted in will also, experts said, have to have full criminal records checks in place and require at least some training to effectively conduct the necessary telephone conversations required of a contact tracer.

“The challenge of all of this is that we’ve had a decade of cuts to public health,” said Martin McKee, professor of European public health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. “And the question is whether we can deliver this and I suspect that has been a consideration of the very beginning.”

“We shouldn’t underestimate how complicated it is,” he added. “We need to be quite careful about getting this right.”

Importance of safeguarding

Of the initial 18,000 people drafted in to help, over 3,000 will be clinicians and public health specialists. Civil servants and local government officials are also set to be called on to help,, according to the Times. The newspaper reported the government hopes to have the scheme up and running by May 7, with Hancock saying that the contact tracers would be trained “over the coming weeks.”

While much emphasis has been placed by government on the development of a new contact-tracing app by the “NHSX” tech innovation unit, experts say that simple manpower is also key to the strategy.

However, one retired public health doctor, who worked in health protection but asked not to be named, warned that the skilled environmental health officers trained to carry out such work were in short supply. “They have absolutely decimated public health in local authorities,” said the doctor.

If new recruits from the ranks of national and local government officials, or even volunteers, are to be used, they will also require training for the task of contact tracing, said Gary McFarlane, the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health’s Northern Ireland director.

“You can make this sound very simplistic, but in reality, it’s actually quite complex, he said. “The critical thing here is the answers that are actually given, because the answers need to inform where the questioning needs to go. It’s about following an investigative path.”

However, the public health doctor disagreed. “It’s not rocket science,” the doctor said, explaining that a contact tracer simply needs to take a contact through their average day, finding out who they have seen and where they went.

But that doesn’t mean the process will be straightforward, with both McKee and the public health doctor raising issues around safeguarding. This could require all contact tracers to have Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) checks, which highlights if someone has a criminal record and usually take four weeks or more. A similar requirement is already in place for volunteers working with the most vulnerable within the NHS’s new volunteer service.

“You must not let people loose on contact tracing who have not been appropriately vetted,” the public health doctor said. “It will just open the floodgates for potential abusers to volunteer and find their way into kids’ networks and vulnerable people’s networks.”

Government officials have been contacted for comment.

‘Alternative’ to full lockdown

According to public health experts, community testing, contact tracing and isolating is one of, if not the most, effective strategy governments could deploy to control the coronavirus epidemic; a “community shield” that could avert the need for repeat lockdowns, according to Anthony Costello, a former World Health Organization director of mother, child and adolescent health.

“We allowed the epidemic to surge by stopping a national strategy for community case finding, testing, contact tracing and isolation on March 12 and still haven’t restarted it,” he told POLITICO. “This virus will come back within weeks of lifting the lockdown. Without a community shield we shall not pick up new cases and outbreaks early, and we shall be left with either repeat lockdowns, or allowing the virus to spread.”

The U.K.’s longest-serving health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, has also been an outspoken advocate of reintroducing the so-called test, trace, isolate strategy.

“If you have a system where anyone who has COVID systems can call [NHS phone line] 111, get a test immediately, we then track everyone they’ve been near and test and isolate them if necessary, you have an alternative to a lockdown,” he told POLITICO last week. “Which is why the shops, restaurants, offices are open in Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong.”

Hunt, who now chairs the House of Commons health committee, has highlighted World Health Organization advice that lists the ability to track and trace every single new COVID case in the community as one of six conditions for easing lockdowns.

“It’s a huge job, you’ve got to put teams in place,” he said. “The obvious thing I think would be to start in parts of the country where we have relatively low numbers of infections like Yorkshire and Cornwall and see whether you can get that mass community testing in place.”

www.markpack.org.uk 

In the run-up to the 2019 general election, there was a lot of media and political excitement about an apparent surge in electoral registration and why that might be good news for Labour.

My scepticism at the time, based on a little maths, was rather an outlier from what others were saying, based in particular on the likelihood that a high proportion of the registration applications would turn out to be duplicates. That is, people already on the register (or not qualified to be on the register) were putting in applications that would therefore not result in actual additions to the electoral register.

The Electoral Commission’s report into the 2019 general election, out this week, now gives us some data on that:

A large number of duplicate applications added unnecessary pressure for EROs and their teams. Data from EROs shows that many applications were submitted by people who were already correctly registered:

• Approximately one in three applications they received before the deadline was a duplicate
• In some areas the proportion of duplicate applications was even higher
• Only around half of all applications led to an addition to the register

That scepticism was justified then.

Overall, this story is a good example of how the truth often travels much more slowly than the news, in this case coming out many months after all those news stories. That’s a theme I expand on in my book, Bad News: what the headline’s don’t tell us.

The wisdom of the Government’s instinct to use privatisation solutions thrown into doubt. 

Hospitals sought to take over the operation of a flagship government coronavirus testing centre from the accounting firm Deloitte after severe failings in the service led to the test results of NHS staff being lost or sent to the wrong person, the Guardian can reveal.

Juliette Garside  www.theguardian.com 

The drive-through centre, at Chessington World of Adventures, in Surrey, was among the first in what will be a network of about 50 regional facilities, trumpeted by the health secretary, Matt Hancock, as key to delivering on the government promise of 100,000 tests a day by the end of April.

On Thursday the government insisted it was on track to meet the target, increasing the tests from less than 10,000 at the start of April and just 23,000 tests on 14,000 people on Wednesday.

Deloitte was hired to help scale up testing nationally, and is understood to be handling logistics across a number of the sites, working alongside other private firms such as Serco and Boots.

Deloitte says it does not run or manage the testing centres, but supports the Department of Health.

In revelations that raise concerns over the rapid outsourcing of testing during the pandemic, chief executives at hospitals in south-west London are understood to have had talks about removing Deloitte and running the Chessington drive-in testing centre themselves.

The alarm was sounded when doctors and nurses complained that test results never arrived, or that they had been sent someone else’s results. In other cases, the test centre, which is about 12 miles south-west of central London, was unable to ring through with the diagnosis because of a failure to record correct phone numbers.

In an email written in early April, and seen by the Guardian, the chief executive of Epsom hospital said: “Deloitte who have been commissioned by the Department of Health directly for this are not running this as well as we would like … [We] are asking whether we can take over the running of the Chessington centre because we really need it to work much better than it is.”

It is understood that the request to remove the firm was made in the first week of April, but that it was set aside after performance improved.

However, Epsom hospital stopped sending staff to Chessington 10 days ago after finding a more convenient alternative, it said. Staff are now swabbed at work and the samples sent to the laboratory at St George’s hospital, south London for analysis.

Epsom could soon be able to do the analysis itself, having ordered four machines made by a company spun out from Cambridge University, which can complete the process in 90 minutes.

The Chessington centre’s problems appear not to have been entirely resolved. A paramedic for the south-east coast ambulance service, who asked not to be named, said he had been tested along with a group of colleagues on 3 April. They were still waiting to hear from Chessington.

“None of us from my place of work, tested on that Friday, have had our results,” he said. “We were told our samples were taken to a lab in Southampton. It’s three weeks since the test and I don’t think I’m ever going to get the result. No one’s been in touch other than my managers to say they’re chasing it.”

The paramedic questioned the involvement of Deloitte, which specialises in management consultancy, tax and accounting but has little experience in running public services. “I’m not sure what is essentially an accountancy company can bring to this.”

A doctor at Epsom hospital, who was among the first to be tested at the end of March while self-isolating at home with symptoms, said she was still waiting to hear; after making enquiries she was told Deloitte could only release information to the person being tested, and not the organisation referring them. She has since been tested by her hospital.

Asked to comment, Daniel Elkeles, who runs Epsom, and its sister hospital, St Helier, in Carshalton, Surrey, said there were “clearly teething problems at Chessington at the start of this contract”.

“We are now assured that those teething problems are fixed and that the service is reliable. But it’s much more convenient for our staff to be swabbed [at the] Epsom and St Helier sites, and for us to send the swabs to St George’s for testing. This means our staff don’t have to travel to Chessington and also means the facility has more capacity for other parts of the health and care system.”

Normally, government contracts over a certain value are advertised publicly and awarded after a competitive tender.

However, it is understood that the health department appointed Deloitte without competition, under an obscure piece of legislation introduced in 2015 which ministries have been told they can use during the pandemic to avoid lengthy tendering processes.

A Deloitte spokesman said: “Deloitte, alongside many other public and private sector partners, is supporting DHSC (the Department of Health and Social Care) to help accelerate and scale testing capacity for the national Covid-19 testing programme.”

DHSC said that only a small number of people had experienced delays in getting their test results in Chessington and that most of those had now been delivered. It said it was continuing to investigate the remainder.

Philip Aldrick Economics Editor The Times 23 April 2020

Britain’s key workers earn 8 per cent less on average than other employees, according to research.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) said that members of the group were similar to the rest of the workforce in age and education but more likely to be lower-paid and female.

Key workers include doctors, nurses, carers, social workers, teachers, prison officers, binmen and those in the food industry, and cover 7.1 million people, or almost a fifth of UK jobs. The government has asked them to continue working to keep essential services going.

The IFS analysis shows that in 2010 their wages were 5 per cent lower than those of similar non-key workers. The think tank said that last year the wage gap was “around 9 per cent after taking differences in their characteristics into account”.

The group earns an average of £12.26 an hour, 8 per cent less than the £13.26 an hour average of other workers. A third of key workers earn £10 an hour or less, below the long-term target for the national living wage, the IFS said.

Donald Trump’s handling of the Covid-19 crisis has left the US looking like a third-world country and on course for a second Great Depression, one of the world’s leading economists has warned.

Larry Elliott Economics editor the Guardian 23 April 2020

In a withering attack on the president, Joseph Stiglitz said millions of people were turning to food banks, continuing to go to work due to a lack of sick pay, and dying because of health inequalities.

The Nobel prize-winning economist said: “The numbers turning to food banks are just enormous and beyond the capacity of them to supply. It is like a third-world country. The public social safety net is not working.”

Stiglitz, along-term critic of Trump, said 14% of the US population was dependent on food stamps and predicted that the social infrastructure could not cope with an unemployment rate that could reach 30% in the coming months.

“We have a safety net that is inadequate,” he said in an interview with the Guardian. “The inequality in the US is so large. This disease has targeted those with the poorest health.

“In the advanced world, the US is one of the countries with the poorest health overall and the greatest health inequality,” he said.

Republicans had opposed proposals to give those affected by coronavirus 10 days’ sick leave, Stiglitz said, meaning that many employees were going to work even while infected. “The Republicans said no because they said it would set a bad precedent. It is literally unbelievable.”

He added: “The safety net is not adequate and is propagating the disease. There is very weak unemployment insurance and people don’t think they can rely on it?’

During an interview to mark the paperback publication of his book People, Power, and Profits, Stiglitz was asked whether the US might be heading for a second Great Depression.

“Yes, is the answer in short,” he said. “If you leave it to Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell [the Republican Senate majority leader], we will have a Great Depression. If we had the right policy structure in place we could avoid it easily?’

Stiglitz said that as a result of Trump’s mismanagement, the White House office responsible for pandemics had been closed, funding for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had been cut, and the US had gone into the crisis without enough testing kits, masks and protective gear. Encouraged by Trump, some parts of the US were determined to reopen in a way that would facilitate the transmission of the disease and lead to a fresh outbreak, he added.

“In those circumstances it won’t be the government enforcing the lock-down, it will be fear. The concern is that people are not going to be spending on anything other than food and that’s the definition of a Great Depression,” he said.

“We were unprepared but, even given the degree of unpreparedness, Trump’s decision to make this about politics rather than about science has meant we have responded far more poorly.”

Stiglitz said that if Trump were defeated in the presidential contest in November and the Democrats took control of both houses of Congress there was a chance of the US moving in a more progressive direction, but he warned that Republicans would fight dirty to cling on to power.

“There is voter suppression and gerrymandering. The Republican party knows it’s a minority party and there is a no-holds-barred struggle going on to make sure a minority party rules America.”

Stiglitz said the current crisis would force countries to make themselves less vulnerable, and this would lead to shorter supply chains and a greater emphasis on self-sufficiency in food and energy.

He added that the complexity of modern production methods meant self-sufficiency was not feasible but added: “Fighting global pandemics and climate change require global, cooperation. It’s just that the president doesn’t understand that.

“I hope we emerge from this with the perspective that multilateral-ism is even more important than we thought. It can’t just be a corporate-driven globalisation. We have to make it more resilient?‘

“The management and the distribution of the PPE stockpile has been outsourced to a private company, Movianto, which was sold two weeks ago for $133m (£107m) by its owner, a large US healthcare group.”

“The fact that Movianto was being sold in the midst of a global pandemic, months after being instructed by the UK government to start mobilising the PPE supply, would be remarkable enough. But the sale is only the latest development in a turbulent 18 months for Movianto, which has included legal disputes with a property developer who built the enormous warehouse in Merseyside.”

Privatisation – unintended consequences or just consequences? Unbelievable – Owl’s advice to government: keep your eye on the ball!

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/22/revealed-private-firm-running-uk-ppe-stockpile-was-sold-in-middle-of-pandemic

The warehouse appears unremarkable, except for its size. Just off a motorway on an industrial estate in Merseyside sits a 35,000 sq m (377,000 sq ft) purpose-built warehouse with 20 loading docks to enable the storage and rapid distribution of hundreds of millions of face masks, aprons, gowns, gloves and body bags.

For security reasons, the Guardian has been asked not to disclose the precise location of the UK’s stockpile of personal protective equipment (PPE) for use in a pandemic. It is being stored on a site where builders moved the equivalent of more than 90 Olympic–size swimming pools of earth to make way for a vast, climate-controlled warehouse.

However, the Guardian can reveal that the management and the distribution of the stockpile has been outsourced to a private company, Movianto, which was sold two weeks ago for $133m (£107m) by its owner, a large US healthcare group.

The fact that Movianto was being sold in the midst of a global pandemic, months after being instructed by the UK government to start mobilising the PPE supply, would be remarkable enough.

But the sale is only the latest development in a turbulent 18 months for Movianto, which has included legal disputes with a property developer who built the enormous warehouse in Merseyside.
The disputes culminated in Movianto securing a high court injunction in March last year, to thwart threats by the developer, Oliver Morley, to “lock the gates” and prevent Movianto employees from accessing the warehoused stock.

Morley’s company has since gone into administration and its legal claims against Movianto have been discontinued, but Morley maintains his legal battles with Movianto were not over. He called for an investigation into the firm, alleging there was “a much bigger story that needs to be told” about his former tenant, but declined to provide specific details.

For its part, Movianto firmly dismisses all of Morley’s allegations, pointing out that his property firm was defeated last year in court. The company insists the legal disputes and the sale have had no impact on its storage or distribution of PPE in recent months.

“Movianto firmly believes that it has and continues to perform to all contractual obligations,” the firm said.

But the saga is likely to put a spotlight on the UK government’s decision to outsource the management of the emergency stockpile. In three years, the stockpile appears to have been stored in three different warehouses. Meanwhile, management of the stock has been passed from a German–owned multinational to an American one.

In the coming months the custody of the UK’s emergency stockpile of PPE will be passed on to a family-run business based in suburban Paris.

A Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) spokesperson said: “The pandemic influenza stockpile held under this contract has remained safely and securely stored at all times and has supported our Covid-19 response through the distribution of vital personal protective equipment and essential supplies to the NHS and social care sector.”

PPE provision

Widespread shortages of PPE have dominated complaints over the government’s handling of the pandemic in recent weeks, including from NHS workers who say their lives are being endangered by the lack of adequate protection. This week an RAF plane was dispatched to Turkey to secure more supplies.

The health secretary, Matt Hancock, insists the government is rising to the challenge, and has repeatedly said the PPE challenge has been “one of distribution rather than one of supply”. In addition to procuring new supplies from China, the DHSC has been drawing on the emergency stockpile, which it has stored since 2006 under its pandemic influenza preparedness programme.

That stockpile is made up of around 52,000 pallets of equipment worth an estimated £500m. While it contains antiviral medicines and flu vaccines which are of limited use against Covid-19, the bulk of stocks are said to be PPE and hygiene products. Much of the stock needs to be frequently monitored, updated and stored in temperature–controlled conditions.

The government owns the stock, but outsources its management to private firms. Previously, the contract was held by DHL. Movianto, a subsidiary of the US health company Owens & Minor, won the £55m deal in the summer of 2018.

As part of Movianto’s plans, the company entered into business with Morley to build the vast warehouse in Merseyside. In the meantime, the pandemic stockpile was to be temporarily housed in another warehouse, also owned by Morley, in Knowsley.

Movianto’s plans were approved by the Cabinet Office, documents suggest. The company says its decision to enter into business with Morley was “made by executives no longer associated with Movianto”.

A notice for the new NHS contract stipulated that the contractor would be required to maintain “a ready state for deployment in the event of a pandemic event”.

In early 2019, Movianto became mired in disputes with Morley’s company, which accused the firm of not paying rent for the warehouse in Knowsley. According to Morley, his tenants became “uncooperative”. “This went on for weeks,” he said. Movianto strongly rejects the allegation, saying it paid rent “in accordance with the terms of the lease”.

Another grievance related to the payment of electricity bills to power the generators to ensure the stock, including medicines, was stored at the right temperature. Morley claims he ended up having to pay for electricity to power the generators, which “kept going on the blink” resulting, he alleges, in “temperature spikes”.

A Movianto source said Morley’s account was inaccurate. In a statement, Movianto said electricity generators were only needed because of “Morley’s own failure to provide a mains supply in accordance with his contractual obligations”.

By his own account, Morley’s financial disputes with Movianto culminated in him threatening the firm. “It got to the point where I said I’m just going to lock the gates and refuse you entry to the site.” When that happened, Movianto rushed to the high court in March 2019 and successfully obtained an injunction to ensure continued access to the warehouse.

Movianto said the injunction was required as “a result of Morley’s conduct and repeated threats to interfere with Movianto’s operations”. It said Morley’s allegations over rent and generators were undermined by “various court proceedings” that ruled in Movianto’s favour. In July 2019, under the control of administrators, Morley’s property company Industrial North West LLP discontinued its legal claims against Movianto.

More challenges ahead

Morley insists he will continue to seek legal action against Movianto – and he is used to high-profile disputes. In January, he lost a prominent lawsuit against RBS in which he claimed the bank’s controversial restructuring group placed him under duress by seizing his assets after struggling to repay a £75m loan. A high court judge noted Morley used the “borrowed personal wealth” to spend on “South African mining investments, property, cars, a yacht and a jet”.

Morley told the Guardian his lifestyle was the result of hard work and “had nothing to do with being a good landlord”. He insists previous business disputes are irrelevant to his grievances against Movianto, which came to a head in May 2019.

As works were completed at the Merseyside warehouse and Movianto prepared to transfer the stockpile from Knowsley, Industrial North West was forced into administration. Documents state the firm “failed to comply” with the conditions of a £61m loan facility.

Morley lost control of his warehouses and administrators stepped in. According to the administrator’s report, the legal dispute “caused delays to the construction works” at the new warehouse, which were finally completed in July 2019. Movianto said the legal disputes “have had no impact on Movianto’s work in response to Covid-19”.
According to a government source, the transfer of the UK’s emergency PPE supplies to the new warehouse was completed by the end of August 2019, four months before the first cases of Covid-19 emerged in China.

The warehouse is now owned by Warrington council, which bought the property for £45m in October. During a change of shifts on Tuesday afternoon, warehouse workers were seen having their car boots searched as they left.

In the coming months, their employer will switch from Owens & Minor to the French company EHDH Holding Group, under a deal agreed on 6 April. The sale is expected to be completed before the end of June, with demand for supplies in the UK’s pandemic stockpile expected to continue for many months.

The distribution of that stockpile’s PPE, it seems, may no longer solely be the responsibility of Movianto. Eleven days ago, the DHSC announced a new “24/7 military operation” to oversee the supply of PPE to health and care workers. “We’ve had to create a whole new logistics network, essentially from scratch,” Hancock said.

A government source said the coronavirus outbreak presented different requirements to a flu pandemic – the basis of Movianto’s original contract. Movianto was now “supporting” the government’s PPE plan through its contractual obligations, the source said. Movianto said the terms of its NHS contracts were “confidential”.

Jeff Jochims, the chief operating officer of Owens & Minor, said: “We look forward to closing the sale of Movianto business to EHDH, but in the meantime will continue our ceaseless work to support the global response to this pandemic.”

In a sign of deepening tensions between the Department of Health and Downing Street, the source said that Hancock’s Cabinet colleague Robert Jenrick was “strongly advised” not to mention the consignment at the government’s coronavirus media briefing last Saturday.

Hancock’s department ‘warned No 10’ not to publicise PPE shipment

Downing Street ignored a firm warning from Matt Hancock’s Department of Health that ministers should not publicise the expected shipment of protective kit for NHS staff from Turkey in case it backfired, a senior departmental source has told the Guardian.

In a sign of deepening tensions between the Department of Health and Downing Street, the source said that Hancock’s Cabinet colleague Robert Jenrick was “strongly advised” not to mention the consignment at the government’s coronavirus media briefing last Saturday.

Instead, the housing, communities and local government secretary – with No 10’s approval – went ahead and promised that it would arrive the next day and contain 83 tonnes of personal protective equipment (PPE), including 400,000 of the full-length surgical gowns that are in critically short supply in the NHS. Its non-arrival on Sunday led hospital bosses to go public for the first time with their “intense frustration and exasperation” with ministers over botched deliveries of PPE.

The disclosures – strongly denied by a source close to Hancock who called them “categorically not true and a fabrication” – come amid what appear to be growing difficulties at the heart of government over who is to blame for the difficulties Boris Johnson’s administration is facing over its handling of the Coronavirus crisis, especially the lack of both testing and PPE for NHS staff.
Hancock was subject to a public attack in a front-page story in Tuesday’s Daily Telegraph, quoting government insiders, over his struggle to deliver the 100,000 tests for Coronavirus a day by the end of the month that he promised in early April.

An unnamed person referred to as an insider who is close to Downing Street aides was quoted as calling the target “arbitrary”, and adding: “There is a faint irrationality behind it, just because there was a clamour for mass testing. Hancock’s 100,000 target was a response to a criticism in the media and he decided to crank out tests regardless.

“He’s not had a good crisis. The prime minister will say he has confidence in him but it doesn’t feel like that. He set out to buy time by setting this target and it threatens to come back to bite him. The 100,000 figure was Hancock’s idea, but he made that figure up.”

On Wednesday, the DHSC source said that Downing Street had been urged not to refer to the cargo before Saturday’s briefing. “We strongly advised Robert Jenrick against doing this [mentioning the Turkey shipment at the government press conference last Saturday] but he and No 10 overruled us,” the source said.

“The advice we gave as a department was that we shouldn’t mention individual orders of PPE. But for whatever reason it wasn’t followed.”

But another cabinet source said it was not right to say “it was just Matt that was warning about this”.

“Lots of people were clear that we shouldn’t be talking about any shipments before they’ve arrived. Everyone in government is normally wary of this and I don’t know why it didn’t happen this time,” he said.

The government has faced severe criticism this week over its handling of deliveries of foreign-sourced PPE to the UK. The promised arrival of 400,000 gowns urgently needed by frontline staff turning into a saga which dragged on into Wednesday, when one of three RAF planes that had been scheduled to bring the shipment back finally touched down in the UK.

The plane had been dispatched from RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire, where two other aircraft have been on standby to pick up further supplies from Turkey since late on 20 April.

The Department of Health and Social Care was blamed for failing to secure the necessary export approvals from Turkey after placing the order, but health sources said on 22 April that there were other reasons for the delay.

The planes remain on standby at RAF Brize Norton and may fly to Istanbul imminently if there is enough equipment waiting to make the journey worthwhile. “We’ve been told there is another delivery at the airport now, but we are not yet sure if there’s enough to justify a flight,” a defence source said.

There have been repeated ministerial assurances that the cargo would imminently arrive in the UK since Saturday when Jenrick first referred to it. His initial announcement was made even though necessary clearances had not been sought.

On Sunday, Gavin Williamson, the education secretary, said he hoped the shipment would arrive the next day. That promise was tentatively repeated by Oliver Dowden, the culture secretary, on Monday morning after NHS leaders intervened. “I don’t want to start making more and more promises, but I understand that flight will take off this afternoon and those [gowns] will be delivered,” Dowden said.

On Tuesday, the government finally adopted a more cautious tone. Simon Clarke, the local government minister, said the consignment would be in the UK “in the next few days”.
The Whitehall source said: “We have been telling people off across government against doing this [talking about expected deliveries before they arrive]. We just need to stop talking about them until they arrive in the country. It’s just not helpful for the government for us to be talking about it.

“The advice that we gave as a department was that we shouldn’t mention individual orders of PPE [because] supply chains are extremely unreliable. When orders fall through or are delayed, for whatever reason, it’s not good for anyone. Nobody in the NHS appreciates being told that we have got X tonnes of PPE turning up but it then not arriving.”

The source added that Hancock has made clear to No 10 and other government departments that: “We shouldn’t be making promises that can’t be delivered on an exact date when we don’t know what will arrive or when. We’re just trying to exercise caution in the way we talk about supplies.”

In the wake of last Sunday’s non-arrival from Turkey, NHS Providers and the NHS Confederation, which both represent hospital trusts in England, made clear that they wanted ministers to stop talking about PPE orders until they actually arrived and had been checked to ensure that they contain what had been ordered.

There are few ways out of the lockdown that do not contain significant risks. Testing, contact tracing and accurate data will be essential to any exit strategy.

Owl agrees but wonder on past form whether the Government is reluctant to organise the effort. Indeed this Times Editorial goes further and asks whether this Government is capable of organising the effort.

Owl is unimpressed by the way the immediate increase in testing has been organised in central locations with the expectation that Care Home staff, for example, should drive many miles, in some reported cases for hours, to the nearest test centre. Then the Government expresses surprise that these testing centres are not fully used.

To Owl this looks like a “London centric” approach. Well – hello London – the rest of the country is different, especially with regard to connectivity by public transport (assuming it is running).

http://www.thetimes.co.uk

In the film Contagion a scientist impusively injects herself with an untested vaccine. It works, is rapidly distributed globally and the people of Earth are saved from a lethal pandemic. No such fantasy solution awaits in the real world of today’s coronavirus. Although it is good news that human trials are beginning in Britain, the road to a vaccine is long and by no means assured. Extensive testing must be followed by manufacture and then distribution on a vast scale. That will take many months. A second hope, that large numbers may already have had the virus and acquired immunity, appears to be fading too. On Monday the World Health Organisation suggested that only 2-3 per cent of the global population have been infected. And while several existing drugs are being tried on very ill patients, none so far offers a panacea.

Yet there is a limit to how long the hard lockdown can be maintained. Its alarming cost is becoming clearer. Jobs and livelihoods have been lost, public debt has risen precipitously, and the longer the crisis continues, the greater the toll on the public’s physical and mental health. The International Monetary Fund has predicted a 3 per cent contraction in the global economy in 2020. That is not its worst-case scenario. The longer the pause, the deeper the economic scars.

That suggests Britain must find a way to live with the virus. The best that lockdowns can do is to suppress it to a level at which the restrictions can be safely lifted. The government must decide what that level is and how the rate of infection can subsequently be contained. A second wave that overwhelms the health system and necessitates further lockdowns would be disastrous. Not only would it cost more lives but it would risk destroying public confidence in future attempts to lift restrictions, thereby deepening the economic damage.

One possible way out of a lockdown is to suppress the epidemic to a point at which it is possible to introduce the kind of test, trace and isolate strategies being deployed in countries such as China, Singapore and South Korea. This is an established method of containing disease. But this approach is not straightforward either. It would require the rate of new infections to be suppressed to very low levels, given that everyone who had come into contact with someone who had tested positive would need to be traced and tested. It would also require a massive expansion of testing capacity, something the government has struggled with.

Another challenge would be to assemble a task force capable of rapidly identifying and then getting in touch with all those who had come into contact with the recently infected. Smartphone apps may provide clues but they are only a partial solution. Much of the work will need to be done by human beings. The overwhelming response to the NHS’s call for volunteers suggests no shortage of willing hands. The question is whether the goverment is capable of organising them. A better option may be to delegate the task to local authorities. Professor Allyson Pollock, a consultant in public health medicine, believes they could set up a national task force within a week.

Of course the alternative way out is to return to some variant of the government’s original herd immunity strategy, easing restrictions for those of working age while continuing to isolate the elderly and vulnerable who are most likely to need critical care. But distinguishing between different segments of the population raises difficult ethical issues. Besides, such a strategy would work only if younger people were convinced that the risk to their health was sufficiently low. That would require better data on morbidity rates than is currently available as well as research on how long immunity may last. Until such information becomes clearer, lifting the lockdown is perilous.

On one level, the argument about what Sir Simon McDonald said to the foreign affairs select committee this week can be dismissed as a storm in a Whitehall teacup. Hours after the head of the foreign office had called Britain’s refusal to join the European Union’s procurement efforts during the Covid-19 pandemic a “political decision”, McDonald retracted his words. Whitehall-watchers are fascinated. The wider world has bigger things to worry about.

Martin Kettle is a Guardian columnist http://www.theguardian.com

But on another level, this week’s row is political dynamite – and for two main reasons.

First, and more immediately, the McDonald affair is another challenge, this time from the Whitehall high command itself, to the government’s increasingly desperate attempts to show that ministers have successfully gripped the effort to secure life-saving medical equipment and protective kit for the fight against the virus. At its most serious, it comes down to an admission that ministers who previously said that the UK did not take part in the ventilator procurement programme because of “communication” errors were actually in a position, early on in the pandemic, to save more lives by joining the scheme, and yet deliberately chose not to.

Second, Tuesday’s furore shoots a beam of light into the dark and tangled argument at the heart of British politics about the longer term strategy and objectives of Boris Johnson’s government. It is a reminder that, in this government, power still rests with those who believe the overriding objective of this administration, even now, is a hard Brexit. It implies that in Johnson’s government the fight against Covid-19 is, of course, massively important – but only up to a point.

McDonald’s session with the foreign affairs committee was not, at the outset, about participation in the EU procurement programme at all. Most of the first hour was about efforts to repatriate UK nationals from around the globe. But when, later on, the committee chair, Tom Tugendhat, asked whether Britain’s failure to take part in the EU programme was a political decision, the head of the foreign office confirmed that it was.

The hasty retraction letter on Tuesday evening was extraordinary. If nothing else, it confirms the incredible sensitivities in government at the moment about its handling of the pandemic. The letter also needs to be read carefully. The key sentence nevertheless appears to be this one: “Ministers were not briefed by our mission in Brussels about the scheme and a political decision was not taken on whether or not to participate.”

The more you read the letter, the more questions it raises. The key point is that, in early February, while the UK’s Brussels mission did not brief ministers – the denial in the letter – about the EU scheme, the Brussels mission clearly did brief departmental civil servants. In practice, that means that Brussels briefed the Foreign Office and the Department of Health and Social Care about the ventilator procurement scheme, presumably at a senior level, in detail and as an issue requiring priority attention. Those civil servants will then have briefed their ministers, including the foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, and the health secretary, Matt Hancock. So ministers were indeed briefed, only not by “our mission in Brussels”. In other words, the ministers knew about the scheme and knew they could take part in it.

What exactly happened next depends in part on what is meant by a “political decision”. That phrase has now been denied. But it is hard to take the retraction too seriously, other than as a means of removing ministerial fingerprints. It can mean what many people would assume, that the decision was political rather than practical or commercial. But in civil service-speak, a political decision can also mean a decision taken by ministers, who are political, rather than officials or expert specialists, who advise them about it.

In this context, that would most probably mean the decision, even in the shape of a “non-decision” to let the issue lie on the table, was taken by or on behalf of Boris Johnson in No 10, but it would be essentially political in both senses. That seems to fit with other evidence suggesting that the question was indeed discussed at Cobra meetings, which always report to the prime minister. It would also be valuable to clarify how and in what terms that initial decision in London was then communicated in a response to the EU in Brussels. If London chose to write itself out of the EU process in February, that may help explain why the UK claims not to have been informed about other joint schemes later.

Even without the full details, there is no way of reading these events as anything except another, and early, example of the government’s failure to take Covid-19 seriously enough soon enough. More than two months later, in Raab’s words in the Commons today, it is now the government’s official policy to take “the right measures at the right time, guided by the science and the medical experts”. But this was not true in February, when the science and the experts were ignored at Cobra. Instead, the decision not to join the EU efforts has contributed to the shortages and failings on which Keir Starmer began his parliamentary career as Labour leader today.

But the importance of the decision goes further, and in a direction that Starmer chose not to follow, perhaps wisely on his debut. The political decision not to join the EU procurement process reflected what was uppermost in Johnson’s and other minds in February. Britain, as McDonald stressed this week, had left the EU on 31 January. The Brexiters had done what they promised at the election. The national ship was being set on a course that turned its back on Europe. They weren’t interested in new post-Brexit links with EU schemes any more than they were interested in establishing such links during the transition period.

Any suggestion, at this of all moments, that the UK should opt into an EU scheme on anything will have been dismissed with contempt. It was in every way a political decision. A month or so later, things – including politics – were different. When Hancock was offered a renewed chance to join another EU-wide scheme, the offer was taken up. But by then Covid-19 was a far larger reality, the UK was facing lockdown, and ministers were playing catch-up, just as they still are today.

McDonald’s retraction on Tuesday shows that, even in the face of Covid-19, not as much has changed as some might assume. The retraction is not just a partisan correction of the record. It is a statement that the Johnson government will maintain its ideological opposition to anything except a hard Brexit. Those who say, as David Lidington did this week, that a Brexit extension is now inevitable because of Covid-19, may be deceiving themselves.

In this government, especially as it struggles to control the coronavirus outbreak in the face of shortages and deaths, the pandemic remains an all-consuming but still essentially temporary concern. Johnson’s essential project is not to save and rebuild the nation. It is Brexit. Always was. Still is.

The UK has underinvested in healthcare “over many years” which has hampered its ability to respond to the coronavirus pandemic, according to the boss of Roche, one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical and diagnostic companies.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-52387605

Severin Schwan, Roche chief executive, told BBC Newsnight: “the real issue here is that the UK has probably not invested enough into healthcare, both in absolute terms and in relative terms over many years. That was a problem to start with, but it really shows up in such a crisis when the system is more stressed.”

The company is a key partner of the government and Public Health England in ramping up testing for coronavirus.

Mr Schwan said: “the cooperation and the partnership with the government is excellent, but you can’t fix the infrastructure in a couple of weeks. I mean, if there is too little investment over many years into the health care system, then it’s simply not possible to ramp up as fast as you would wish in such a challenging situation.”

Roche now has 13 UK sites operating to run high-throughput swab testing for coronavirus, under its partnership with the government.

But Mr Schwan added that, in terms of these high-throughput systems, the UK still had “about half the capacity” of other European countries, like Germany and Switzerland, relative to population.

A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Social Care said: “The government is committing record investment to the NHS, including the Long-Term NHS funding settlement, which has been enshrined in law. We have created a whole national testing programme from scratch.

“Simultaneously, we have increased the capacity of our laboratories and established a partnership with Roche diagnostics, which has already provided thousands of additional tests.”