UK coronavirus live: Keir Starmer accuses Boris Johnson of ‘winging it’ over lockdown easing

The BBC’s Danny Shaw has some interesting, and worrying, statistics showing that a disproportionate number of people from black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds have been fined for alleged lockdown breaches:

Boris Johnson has said he will offer nearly three million people in Hong Kong a route to UK citizenship if China imposes a security law that critics say would rob the territory of its autonomy.

Writing in The Times (£), the prime minister offered to make what he described as one of the “biggest changes” in the history of the British visa system to allow 2.85 million Hong Kong citizens the chance of fully-fledged citizenship.

The move, which represents an escalation in the stand-off between the UK and China, would put Hongkongers “on the route to citizenship”, said the Conservative Party leader.

China’s ceremonial legislature, the National People’s Congress, endorsed a security law for Hong Kong earlier this week that has strained relations with the UK and the US.

Jeremy Hunt has said it would be “impossible” for the government’s flagship test-and-trace programme to be successful unless it rapidly speeds up the turnaround of test results from 48 hours.

Hunt, the chair of the Commons health select committee, pointed out minutes from a Sage meeting which said that to be effective the programme must get people to isolate “within 48 hours” of them being in contact with an infected person.

It currently takes an average of 48 hours for test results to be delivered.

Hunt told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme:

“My biggest concern at the moment is the time it’s taking for tests to be turned around … If the test results themselves take 48 hours to come back that is going to be impossible.”

Hunt said he welcomed Boris Johnson’s new 24-hour test turnaround target but added: “But at the moment, the government isn’t saying how many tests are being met within that target and for test and trace it’s absolutely essential that they all are.”

Dido Harding, who is in charge of the UK’s test-and-trace programme, is appearing before Hunt’s health select committee later today. He said he would press Harding for figures on how many people had been contacted so far under the programme.

Nissan has warned that its huge Sunderland factory would be unsustainable in the event of a no-deal Brexit.

Ashwani Gupta, the company’s global chief operating head, has told the BBC the imposition of tariffs would undermine its business model.

The Japanese carmaker, which employs 6,000 people at Sunderland and supports another 24,000 jobs in the supply chain, has previously warned that a no-deal Brexit would threaten its entire European business model.

Gupta told the BBC:

You know we are the number one carmaker in the UK and we want to continue. We are committed. Having said that, if we are not getting the current tariffs, it’s not our intention but the business will not be sustainable. That’s what everybody has to understand.

The health minister Edward Argar is fielding questions on behalf of the government this morning.

On BBC Breakfast, he was quizzed about the government’s use of statistics.

He said he didn’t have a figure for the number of people being tested every day and could not say how many people had been traced under its new test and trace programme.

The government hasn’t published figures on how many people have been tested for almost two weeks. It says this has been “temporarily paused to ensure consistent reporting”.

Asked about a Channel 4 News report that found that only 37% of contacts given to the government’s test-and-trace programme had been contacted last week, Argar described the figures as “partial and outdated” but said he could not provide more accurate data:

“We’re into the thousands but I’m not going to give you a figure until we’ve worked with the UK Statistics Authority to get a reliable and accurate methodology of giving that data out. We’re working at pace with them and as soon as we can come to an agreement with them we’ll be publishing that data on a weekly basis.”

Chaand Nagpaul, the chair of the council of the British Medical Association, has criticised an official report published yesterday that confirmed that people from black, Asian and minority ethnic groups are dying disproportionately from Covid-19.

Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Nagpaul expressed concern that the report had not come up with any conclusions, recommendations or actions to urgently protect people in the most at-risk groups:

It’s just full of graphs and figures. It’s a statistics analysis; it isn’t a report or review that has come up with any actions or recommendations and therefore it hasn’t taken us further.

Prof John Newton, of Public Health England, told No 10’s daily briefing last night that more work was needed to understand the disproportionate effect of Covid-19 on people from BAME backgrounds. He urged people not to jump to conclusions from its report.

But Nagpaul said: “We don’t have the luxury of going out and discussing how to implement this report. What we need is some clear recommendations and actions and mitigations now, which really could be taking place.”

It’s shaping up to be another busy day. This is what’s coming up later:

11am Metropolitan police commissioner Cressida Dick gives evidence at the London Assembly Police and Crime Committee.

12noon Boris Johnson faces Keir Starmer at Prime Minister’s Questions.

Also at 12noon

• Belfast’s chief scientific officer and Sage member, Prof Ian Young, gives evidence to Northern Ireland Assembly’s health committee.

• Nurses protest outside Downing St.

12.30pm Coronavirus briefings from Scottish and Welsh governments.

2.30pm Dido Harding, who is in charge of the UK’s test and trace programme, and Paul Deighton, the head of the UK’s domestic PPE efforts, appear before the health and social care committee.

Also at 2.30pm Former chancellors Philip Hammond, George Osborne and Alastair Darling appear at Treasure committee

4pm Northern Ireland briefing.

5pm Downing St briefing.

Good morning and welcome to our UK live blog on the coronavirus pandemic.

Labour has sharpened its attack on the government’s handling of the crisis this morning after Keir Starmer said Boris Johnson must “get a grip” or No 10 would be directly responsible for a second spike in the infection rate.

In an interview with the Guardian, the Labour leader accused the prime minister of “winging it” over the easing of the lockdown and making an already “difficult situation 10 times worse”.

Starmer also questioned whether the timing of some decisions over the relaxation of the lockdown rules had been taken “to try to deflect attention away” from the Dominic Cummings affair. The easing of the lockdown, he said, was “an exit without a strategy”.

The two leaders will face each other for the first time in two weeks at prime minister’s questions from midday. We’ll bring you live coverage.