NHS

Cronyism concerns have led to Labour urging companies with Conservative Party links to disclose their pandemic profits. Research by the Opposition suggests the value of contracts awarded to firms with connections to the Tories amounts to almost £2 billion. Shadow Cabinet Office minister Rachel Reeves is expected to reveal she has written to the top […]

Tory former health minister Jeremy Hunt has urged caution about reports of Covid restriction being mostly gone by May. Speaking with the Guardian, Hunt said cases should drop to 1,000 per day before re-opening the economy. Hunt’s remarks come as lockdown-sceptic Tory MPs are calling for measures to be lifted entirely by June. On Thursday, […]

As Britain’s vaccine rollout gets further through the population, it’s challenges are going to mount, explains JAMES BALL. In this long, grey, lockdown winter there is only one real hope of a sustainable way to open up during the spring: the mass rollout of coronavirus vaccines. The comforting fact is there is a lot of […]

NHS boss Sir Simon Stevens has warned that the UK faces a coronavirus vaccine shortage. The NHS England chief executive also said any export restrictions on EU-produced vaccines would be a “worry”. He admitted “of course there is a supply shortage” of coronavirus vaccines. He told MPs: “If there were unlimited vaccines then you wouldn’t […]

Tory MPs have voted down a House of Lords amendment aimed at protecting the NHS from post-Brexit trade deals. The amendment, proposed by peers, would have blocked trade deals that “undermines or restricts” the ability to provide “a comprehensive publicly funded health service free at the point of delivery”. But Tory MPs voted down the […]

NHS Test and Trace boss Dido Harding has defended paying consultants £1,000 a day. Harding, a Tory peer, told the Commons Public Accounts Committee that she felt it was “appropriate” to seek help from the private sector in “extreme emergency circumstances” such as the Covid-19 pandemic. David Williams, the Second Permanent Secretary at the Department of […]

MPs have a “moral duty” to protect the NHS from being negotiated in trade deals, campaigners have said as a vote on protecting the health service enters the House of Commons for a second time. Anti-privatisation campaigners claim that failing to protect the NHS from trade deals would open it up to being charged more […]

Vaccine minister Nadhim Zahawi has withheld information about the government’s coronavirus jab roll-out programme saying he did not want to “show off” Britain’s programme. Zahawi refused to say just how many doses the UK was receiving from vaccine manufacturers such a Pfizer and AstraZeneca on a weekly basis because it was a matter of “national security”. Appearing […]

A Tory politician has resigned after claiming A&E departments were full of “fat mums in pot noodle-stained leggings” with their “snot-covered Asbo” children. Constituency Conservative chairman Gareth Baines claimed mothers were were taking their children to hospital “for a day out” to “harvest Facebook likes”. In one message over New Year’s, Baines wrote: “A&Es in […]

NHS leaders have called on Boris Johnson to extend the Brexit transition period by a month, as it warns that no-deal could risk the health of patients during the Covid-19 crisis. Faced with an alarming rise in Covid-19 infections, they say that a month delay will take the NHS out of “the immediate danger zone, and […]

The government’s Test and Trace service has finally hit its contact tracing target for the first time since May. Tracers were finally able to exceed the 80% target of close contact reached which experts say is needed to make the system effective. The percentage of “close contacts” of people with Covid-19 in England reached 85.7pc for the week ending December […]

Nearly three-quarters of the Britons do not want US healthcare companies to be given increased access to the NHS, a new poll has found. Polling commissioned by anti-privatisation campaigners We Own It found 73pc of respondents did not want US companies to be allowed to offer NHS services, compared to 13pc who do. The poll comes amidst fears […]

A public spending watchdog has found that the government spent £10 billion extra in inflated prices for pandemic-battling personal protective equipment (PPE) due to an “inadequate” stockpile and a surge in global demand. Procurement chiefs at the Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC) faced inflated prices for safety kit, paying 1,300% more for some items […]

The Test and Trace system has reached the lowest ever proportion of contacts of people who tested positive for Covid-19 in England, a day after Boris Johnson said it had achieved a “remarkable feat”. Four in 10 close contacts of people who tested positive are still not being reached by the system, at the same […]

A handful of Tory MPs have defied public opinion and their own party to vote against Boris Johnson’s lockdown plans. The prime minister’s bill sailed through the Commons by 516 to 39 in a vote on Wednesday evening. Under the legislation, non-essential shops will be forced to close and social gatherings and non-essential travel banned from Thursday […]

There are fresh hopes for a coronavirus vaccine at the end of England’s national lockdown after an NHS chief said GPs are gearing up to start delivering potential remedies before Christmas. Sir Simon Stevens said family doctors will be ready to start by Christmas “if the vaccine becomes available”, putting it in line with the […]

A health minister has rebuffed calls for cross-party talks on a mental health package for NHS staff, telling Labour the only way they would sway policy was to “win an election”.  Nadine Dorries, the minister for mental health, said the government had launched a range of initiatives to help people with mental health conditions cope during the […]

A government adviser has blamed the public for the low level of people being contacted by NHS Test and Trace staff. The official said the public’s reluctance to answer calls from unknown numbers was the reason so few people have been reached by the government’s test and trace team. Data released last week showed that two in […]

A software glitch inside the government’s coronavirus app has led to thousands of people not being told to self-isolate when they should have been. They were apparently not contacted because the app has been set to the wrong sensitivity, the government has admitted to the Sunday Times. For more than a month, officials from the Department of Health and […]

International Trade Secretary Liz Truss has issued a dig about Donald Trump’s approach to trade, and has insisted British values would not be compromised for post-Brexit trade deals. Truss said Britain would reject a Donald Trump-style “Britain First” approach as she criticised “values-free globalisation” in a keynote speech in London. In a Chatham House address Truss said […]

Labour is demanding an investigation into a leaked dossier which shows hundreds of millions of pounds worth of coronavirus contracts were handed to “VIPs”. Documents leaked by the Good Law Project, an anti-corruption watchdog, allegedly expose special procurement channels that allowed contractors to bid for work without needing to undergo the normal tendering process. The organisation – which has […]

Dido Harding seems to make a habit of taking on roles for which, on paper, she is unsuitable. At private school, she was captain of the basketball team despite her diminutive stature. “At 5ft 3 inches she was captain which just seems ridiculous when most basketball players these days are 6ft 10,” recalls an old […]

Believe it or not, I try not to yield too often to the temptation to join the dots between the stance politicians took on Brexit to the ones they now advocate on the appropriate government response to the global Covid-19 pandemic. It’s a bit mean, especially to voters in deprived areas who voted Leave in […]

A government minister has struggled to defend the pay of some private contractors behind the ailing NHS Test and Trace system. A report by Sky News revealed the government is paying contractors from the Boston Consulting Group around £7,000 a day to help with the coronavirus test and trace system. Up to 40 consultants were paid […]

The effectiveness of England and Wales’s coronavirus app is under the spotlight once again after it was reported that only one alert about an outbreak in a venue has been delivered since the service launched a fortnight ago. People are able to scan codes on posters before entering venues such as pubs and restaurants using the […]