Andrew Sparrow and Simon Murphy (now); Frances Perraudin (earlier) 

UK coronavirus: George Eustice urges furloughed workers to pick fruit; death toll rises by 545 – as it happened

Official total now at to 35,341; UK facing ‘severe recession the likes of which we haven’t seen’, says Rishi Sunak
  
  


Summary

  • UK Covid-19 death toll riseS by 545 to 35,341, according to latest figures

Speaking at Downing Street’s daily press conference, the environment secretary, George Eustice, urged Britons to apply for jobs as fruit pickers to compensate for the fact that only a third of the eastern Europeans who normally come to the UK to do this work are expected to arrive.

Giving evidence to the Lords economic affairs committee earlier today, the chancellor said that by the end of the year he expected the percentage of the population in unemployment to be in double figures. It is not obvious that there will be an immediate bounce back, he added.

“We are likely to face a severe recession, the likes of which we haven’t seen, and of course that will have an impact on employment,” he said.

  • Number of people claiming unemployment benefits surged in April as lockdown hit economy, figures show

The UK claimant count jumped by 69% during the month, as 856,000 more people received universal credit and jobseeker’s allowance benefits in April. That lifted the claimant count to nearly 2.1 million people, from 1.24 million in March. In the south-west, the claimant count almost doubled during the month.

Meanwhile, more than 2m households have applied for universal credit, the UK’s main social security benefit, since the coronavirus lockdown started to hit the economy in mid-March, according to the latest figures from the Department for Work and Pensions.

Nick Stripe, the head of the health analysis and life events division at the ONS, told the BBC the total number of excess deaths in the UK - the number above what might be expected at this time of year, judged by a five-year average – was just under 55,000 by early May.

Scientists, and ministers, have repeatedly said that the excess death figures will ultimately prove the most reliable guide as to how badly the UK has been hit by coronavirus.

Half a dozen people from three Premier League football clubs have tested positive for Covid-19 in two days. With hopes of top-flight football resuming next month, the Premier League announced six players or staff returned positive results in its first two days of testing.

Facing an urgent question from the shadow minister for social care, Liz Kendall, Hancock defended the government’s approach, saying deaths in care homes were falling.

Kendall highlighted that more than 23,000 more people had died in care homes in the first four months of this year compared with last, accusing ministers of being “too slow” to tackle the impact of the virus in social care.

  • Commons science and technology committee criticises government for ‘inadequate’ coronavirus testing capacity throughout pandemic

The group of MPs identified several lessons to learn from the UK’s handling of the outbreak, and criticised a lack of transparency over some crucial decision-making. They called on the government to “urgently” build up capacity for contact tracing, a key tactic in helping ease existing lockdown measures.

Updated

Here’s more on the news earlier that Labour’s annual party conference has been cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

The conference, which would have been Sir Keir Starmer’s first as leader and was due to be attended by 13,000 people in Liverpool in September, will be replaced with online events.

“Our priority is the safety of members, staff and visitors to our events and the need to protect the public’s health,” a spokesman for the party said. “In light of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, we have therefore decided to postpone this year’s annual and women’s conferences.”

Labour’s decision to cancel casts doubt on the conference season for the other main parties. A Liberal Democrat source told PA Media that a decision on the party’s own conference, due to be held in Brighton, would be made this evening and it was expected to also be moved online.

Updated

Lockdown should not be eased until 'track and trace' system in place, says deputy chief science adviser

Here are the main points from the press conference.

  • Prof Dame Angela McLean, the government’s deputy chief scientific adviser, said that scientists have told ministers that they should only relax the lockdown when a proper contact tracing system is in place. She said:

Scientists have been very clear in our advice that changes to lockdown, as we modelled them, need a highly effective track, trace and isolate system to be in place. And we’re also very clear that any change to the social distancing measures should be based upon observed levels of incidents in places where those are going to be changed, not on a fixed date.

Downing Street has implied that the lockdown could be relaxed further without a contact tracing system being rolled out across England. A contact tracing app is being trialled on the Isle of Wight, and the government has hired 21,000 people to do contact tracing. But the government has not been able to commit to having a countrywide contact tracing system up and running by 1 June, which is when it wants to move to the next stage of easing the lockdown, including with some primary school pupils returning to school in England. McLean’s comment is unlikely to be welcomed by No 10. These are from my colleague Peter Walker.

  • McLean said scientific advisers were due to be told this Thursday when the government would be able to roll out the “track and trace” contact tracking system. (See 5.29pm.)
  • She said that the government had to limit the extent of testing in March because it did not have the capacity to test everyone with suspected coronavirus. She said:

The advice that we gave certainly took account of what testing was available.

It was the best thing to do with the tests that we had. We could not have people in hospital with Covid symptoms not knowing whether or not they had Covid.

It is only recently that officials have said explicitly that capacity was the problem; previously it was claimed that there were policy reasons for the decision to abandon widespread testing. But even at this press conference George Eustice, the environment secretary, was not quite as open about capacity being the problem as McLean. (See 5.23pm.)

  • Eustice dismissed as a “caricature” claims that the government did not protect people in care homes from coronavirus. But he accepted that some patients with coronavirus were discharged into care homes. He said:

We don’t accept the caricature that we took an approach that was wrong.

Very early on in this epidemic we had protocols in place for care homes, there was guidance as to how they should approach things.

As the situation developed then more stringent policies were introduced by way of policy around discharge and we got to the point where everybody was tested before discharge.

But in those early weeks there will have been some instances where people may have been discharged who were asymptomatic, there may have been some – a small number of instances – where they may have been showing symptoms but would have been isolating.

That was the guidance at the time that was in place but we have strengthened that very much ever since then, we now have testing and a rigorous discharge policy that’s in place and that is getting stronger all the time.

  • Eustice urged Britons to apply for jobs as fruit pickers to compensate for the fact that only a third of the eastern Europeans who normally come to the UK to do this work are expected to arrive. But he advised people interested to try a new Pick for Britain website that has not been working this afternoon. He said:

Every year large numbers of people come from countries such as Romania or Bulgaria to take part in the harvest, harvesting crops such as strawberries and salads and vegetables.

We estimate that probably only about a third of the people that would normally come are already here, and small numbers may continue to travel.

But one thing is clear and that is that this year we will need to rely on British workers to lend a hand to help bring that harvest home.

This is from LBC’s Ben Kentish.

  • McLean said government advisers were looking in detail at whether lockdown measures should be eased at different times in different places. Asked if there was a case for treating remote island communities differently, she replied:

I can tell you for sure location is a huge focus of ours at the moment.

Islands are a very special case which is, of course, particularly interesting but there are also other parts of the country that have ... the spread of the infection across the country is really quite diverse, quite heterogeneous and that does, of course, raise interesting questions, particularly as we get incidents right, right down about what should we do about that.

Updated

MSPs have voted to repeal controversial measures which gave the Scottish government and public bodies the right to take up to three months to answer freedom of information requests.

To the dismay of civil rights groups and opposition MSPs, the Scottish government pushed through emergency legislation in April which gave public bodies up to 60 working days to answer requests.

Ministers claimed the coronavirus pandemic was an exceptional case which put the public sector under too great a strain to respond to requests within 20 days, even though no other government in the UK or Europe followed suit.

MSPs on the Scottish parliament’s Covid-19 committee backed amendments to a further emergency bill, Coronavirus (Scotland) (No 2), from the Scottish Greens on Tuesday to return to the original rules under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002.

The Greens’ measures were supported by Scottish National party MSPs on the committee, after SNP amendments were voted down, implying that the SNP minority government will back the amendments when the bill is finally voted on on Thursday. Ross Greer, a Scottish Green MSP, said:

Confidence in government is critical right now but it depends on transparency. Restricting freedom of information was wrong and unnecessary, reflected by the fact that no other country in Europe has taken this step. The Greens are glad to have brought Scotland back in line with common standards of openness and transparency.

Updated

The Labour party has cancelled its conference this autumn, according to Sienna Rodgers from LabourList.

Updated

McLean says it is important to have a rapid and reliable testing system.

Q: Are you confident that we have got one?

It is getting better, says McLean.

And that’s it. The press conference is over.

Eustice says the government has provided extra funding for coronavirus. He says he accepts they will say they need more. But they have funds set aside, he says, referring to reserves. And he says he thinks the £3.2bn already allocated is the right decision.

Q: What will you prioritise in the Brexit talks? The City, which contributes greatly to the UK economy, or the fishing industry, which contributes much less?

Eustice says the government wants the UK to be an independent country. He says the EU expects the UK, uniquely, to give it unlimited access to its waters.

He says the government should not go into the negotiation planning to sacrifice one industry to help another.

Q: Are you considering easing the lockdown in island communities more quickly?

McLean says she cannot comment on policy, but she says whether to treat islands differently is an interesting issue.

Updated

Q: In February a WHO report said community tracing was the best way to combat coronavirus. So why was that not followed? And who takes ultimate responsibility - the politicians or the scientists?

McLean says the advice in March was based on the testing capacity available. It was not acceptable not to test people in hospital, she says.

Eustice says the government has been increasing capacity. And he says it was right to prioritise hospital testing.

Q: So are you saying that the advice given in March was the best advice possible in the context at the time.

McLean says that is what she is saying.

In his opening remarks Eustice urged people interested in fruit picking work to use a pickforbritain website.

As my colleague Fran Lawther points out, it does not seem to be working.

Q: Can you understand why teachers don’t trust the government on the safety of re-opening schools?

Eustice says he does not accept that the government has mishandled the crisis.

On schools, he says the government is working closely with unions and school leaders. He says countries like Denmark have shown it is possible to re-open schools.

Q: Track and trace won’t be in place by 1 June. Does that affect the decision?

McLean says there will be an update on Thursday as to what will be in place (in terms of track and trace) and when.

Q: Do you accept this is a political decision?

Eustice says the government is following the science.

But he says we will have to live alongside this virus for some time to come.

Q: You say you are inspired by contact tracing in South Korea. Do you regret the decision to abandon it in March?

Eustice says the government is ramping it up now. More than 20,000 people have been recruited to help, he says.

McLean says in March it was right to focus the testing capacity that was available on the people who really needed it in hospital.

Q: So you admit that capacity, not need, was the issue?

Eustice says they have been building capacity.

Another member of the public asks if the government will extend payment holidays on mortgages and loans for people who lose work.

Eustice says the government has offered unprecedented help. Those schemes will evolve, he says. The Treasury will be thinking about how the job retention scheme can evolve.

The first question comes from a member of the public who wants to know what the government is doing to learn lessons from other countries about how to ease the lockdown.

Eustice says the government is looking at the experience in other countries.

McLean says two countries stand out. South Korea has used contact tracing particularly well to drive numbers down. They now just have a handful. The UK would like to emulate that, she says. And she says she would like to learn from Germany’s record on testing.

McLean is now introducing the daily slides.

She starts with one about transport use.

Here are the hospital figures. She says the hospital admissions figures are falling, but not as quickly as people might have expected.

And here are the regional hospital figures.

Here are the death figures.

Eustice is now talking about the availability of foreign labour for the harvest.

Normally workers from countries like Romania and Bulgaria come.

But only around a third of them are here, he says.

He says the government is encouraging Britons to take these jobs.

He says staff who are furloughed may want to supplement their income with a second job.

Eustice says there have been 545 more UK coronavirus deaths, taking total to 35,341

Eustice starts by reading out the latest figures.

He says there have been a further 545 UK deaths, taking the total to 35,341

George Eustice's press conference

George Eustice, the environment secretary, is taking the UK government’s afternoon press conference. It is about to start. He will be with Prof Dame Angela McLean, the government’s deputy chief scientific adviser.

Three Premier League football clubs hit by positive Covid-19 tests ahead of top-flight return

Half a dozen people from three Premier League football clubs have tested positive for Covid-19 in two days.

With hopes of top-flight football resuming next month, the Premier League announced six players or staff returned positive results in its first two days of testing.

The league carried out 748 tests on Sunday and Monday as part of a process designed to allow matches to restart next month. It means that just under 1% of those tested returned positive results. A recent survey of 11,000 people suggests one in 400 people – 0.27% – in England is infected.

Squads were allowed to return to training today, carried out according to physical distancing. It is understood the league is awaiting results from at least one more club.

The league said in a statement: “The Premier League can today confirm that, on Sunday 17 May and Monday 18 May, 748 players and club staff were tested for Covid-19. Of these, six have tested positive from three clubs. Players or club staff who have tested positive will now self-isolate for a period of seven days.

The Premier League is providing this aggregated information for the purposes of competition integrity and oversight. No specific details as to clubs or individuals will be provided by the Premier League due to legal and operational requirements.

The league had been hoping that matches would resume on 12 June, but there is now an expectation this will be pushed back until at least the end of the month if not later. Germany’s Bundesliga saw action behind closed doors at the weekend for the first time since the lockdown, while South Korea’s top flight has also resumed.

Updated

Frost tells Barnier EU offering UK 'low-quality trade agreement with unprecedented oversight'

Alongside the draft text of a proposed trade treaty with the EU, No 10 has also published this afternoon an open letter (pdf) from David Frost, the PM’s chief Europe adviser, to Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator. In the four-page letter, which is written in a tone of polite indignation (feigned or genuine, it’s hard to tell), Frost sets out in detail why the UK government thinks the EU’s demands are unreasonable. He says:

Overall, at this moment in negotiations, what is on offer is not a fair free trade relationship between close economic partners, but a relatively low-quality trade agreement coming with unprecedented EU oversight of our laws and institutions.

The number of confirmed cases of Covid-19 in the prison estate continues to rise, daily figures from the Ministry of Justice show.

As at 5pm on Monday, 422 prisoners had tested positive for the coronavirus across 74 prisons, a 3% increase in 24 hours, while there were 542 infected prison staff across 72 prisons, an increase of just 0.4% in the same period.

There are around 80,300 prisoners in England and Wales across 117 prisons, while around 33,000 staff work in the public sector prisons.

At least 21 prisoners are known to have contracted Covid-19 and died, as well as nine prison staff, including one Pecs (prison escort and custody services) worker.

Updated

The Duke of Cambridge has highlighted the strain of the Covid-19 pandemic on the mental health of frontline workers looking after others, urging them: “Take care of yourself too.”

In a video message, Prince William thanked those working in the emergency services, hospitals or care homes, calling on them to seek support if their mental wellbeing is suffering.

“When you spend all day taking care of others it is easy to forget that you need to take care of yourself too,” he said. “But it’s OK to say when you’re not feeling OK. There is support available to you, if and when you need it.”

The message is part of the recently launched Our Frontline initiative, supported by his Royal Foundation, which provides one-to-one support and online resources for a range of workers whose psychological wellbeing may be under pressure.

In the video, posted on Our Frontline Twitter account, William said: “I want to say a huge thank you from myself and Catherine for all that you are doing to keep everyone safe. You and your families are making huge sacrifices, and we want you to know that the whole country is enormously proud of you.

The challenges you are facing, day in, day out, are unprecedented. Even in normal circumstances, frontline work can take its toll not just on your physical health, but also on your mental wellbeing.”

The duke, who was a pilot with the East Anglian Air Ambulance and has spoken in the past about the mental pressures that came with the job, added: “From my time with the air ambulance, I know all too well how determined frontline workers are to put a brave face on and keep going.”

In a 2018 interview, William said the experience of attending traumatic emergencies involving children and having his own children “tipped me over the edge”, but speaking to his crew helped him cope with the “enormous sadness” he had witnessed.

The duke and duchess have pledged to make the mental health of frontline workers their “top priority” in the months ahead. Mind, Samaritans, Shout - a text messaging helpline supporting people in crisis - Hospice UK and the Royal Foundation launched Our Frontline a few weeks ago, with William and Kate’s charitable body helping to raise awareness.

Updated

In the Lords economic affairs committee Sunak says debt will obviously be higher after the coronavirus crisis. But he says he has not made a decision yet as to what a sustainable debt level would be.

At the Lords economic affairs committee Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, has just been engaged in a minor spat with Lord Forsyth, the committee chair, about social care. Forsyth said there was a consensus about adult social care needing much higher funding. Sunak affected surprise, and said that if there was a consensus, he would like to hear about it (implying that he thought no such consensus existed). Forsyth said that his committee published a report last summer saying the sector needed another £15bn. The report said the money should come from general taxation, but it did not make specific recommendations as to which taxes should go up. Sunak said he thought the plans would require income tax rising by either 2p or 3p in the pound. He implied that he thought it would be hard to get consensus support for tax increases on that scale.

David Henig, a former civil servant and trade specialist who now heads the UK Trade Policy Project for the European Centre for International Political Economy, has been looking at the UK government’s draft text for a proposed trade deal with the EU. He has posted a detailed Twitter thread on it starting here.

And here are his conclusions.

The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine has published some new research today suggesting the people with chronic medical conditions, like obesity, hypertension and lung disease, have been disproportionately likely to reduce the amount of exercise they take during the lockdown. Dr Nina Rogers, the lead author of the study, said:

Low levels of physical activity put adults at increased risk of chronic diseases like obesity, cardiovascular disease and stroke which are also potential risk factors for more severe complications if someone develops Covid-19.

It is concerning that in the mid to long term, multiple lockdowns might lead to prolonged periods of low physical activity which could increase the size of the population that is most vulnerable to severe complications from Covid-19.

Harriet Harman, the chair of parliament’s joint committee on human rights (JCHR), has called for MPs to be allowed to vote on a data protection bill safeguarding widespread use of the government’s contact-tracing app.

The Labour MP and her committee have produced what is effectively a private member’s bill – a proposed law submitted by a backbencher – aimed at improving privacy standards and boosting public confidence in the novel system.

In a briefing on Wednesday, Harman said she had sent the digital contact tracing (data protection) bill to the health secretary, Matt Hancock, and to Jacob Rees-Mogg, leader of the Commons.

Specific legislation, she urged, is required rather than the existing “mishmash” of standards involving the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), case law, the European convention on human rights and the Data Protection Act because the contact-tracing app is more ambitious than anything previously envisaged.

The JCHR bill would prevent data being used for other purposes, stop anybody not authorised gaining access to it, delete the data after the pandemic and establish a contact-tracing human rights commissioner.

Harman said she would personally download the app, which is already being piloted on the Isle of Wight, but her committee’s view was that it should not go ahead without new privacy protections.

Those protections should apply whether or not the government continued with its existing centralised model or whether it eventually opted for the type of “decentralised” app being used more widely on the continent.

Only Australia, she had acknowledged, has so far passed data protection legislation specifically applying to a contact-tracing app. “I have asked Jacob Rees-Mogg to make time in parliament to bring [the bill] forward,“ Harman said. “If not they should allow parliament to say whether [should have a vote on it.]”

Asked whether safeguards should be relaxed during an emergency, Harman said it was a matter of balancing the right to life with privacy protections.

Updated

Back in the Lords economic affairs committee, asked if he agrees that promoting growth should take precedence over addressing debt after the crisis is over, Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, says that of course he wants to promote growth.

Welcome news for Italian food lovers as Pizza Express becomes the latest restaurant chain to cautiously reopen restaurants to offer home delivery across the capital.

The firm will start delivering from 13 sites in London over the next 10 days, offering a limited menu to ensure staff can work safely in kitchens and prep areas.

It follows an earlier announcement from Wagamama, which is expanding delivery across the nation, and comes in the wake of KFC, McDonald’s, Greggs and Subway all making similar plans or starting trading again after shutting due to the Covid-19

Zoe Bowley, the managing director of Pizza Express in the UK and Ireland, said the chain would offer an edited menu from restaurants in “London villages”, including Notting Hill, Balham and Fulham, where demand is highest.

Writing in industry newsletter Propel, she said: “We will do this to test and learn, and then it will enable us to programme the roll-out and ultimately pave the way for dine in the future.”

Restaurants and bars have been allowed to remain open for takeaways and deliveries under government rules but many larger chains chose to shut completely, to protect staff from travelling to work.

Bowley added in the piece: “There has been huge rigour around all the right safety protocols so our teams feel comfortable, and then we can really demonstrate to customers how we are looking after the teams and ensure they trust the quality of the pizza they receive.”

Meanwhile, service station business Moto said it will reopen seven Costa drive-throughs and have 27 Burger Kings open for takeaway to the public by Thursday.

Updated

UK plan for free trade deal with EU would be 'devastating blow', says Scottish government

Michael Russell, the Scottish government’s constitution secretary, has issued this statement following the publication of the UK government’s draft text of a proposed free trade treaty with the EU. (See 3.08pm.) He said:

People in Scotland will be utterly dismayed that the UK government is pressing ahead with these complex negotiations when all their efforts should be focused on tackling the current unprecedented crisis.

Despite making many requests to see these texts, the Scottish government only received these legal texts a few hours before publication so we have not yet had the opportunity to analyse in any detail what is proposed.

But it is clear the UK government’s plans for only a basic trade deal or what increasingly seems to be their preferred option of no deal will be a devastating blow for Scotland’s economy already hit hard by coronavirus.

Yet again the UK government has chosen to treat Scotland’s interests and views with contempt and they have failed to involve any of the devolved governments in any meaningful way.

Updated

In the Lords committee Lord Forsyth, the former Conservative cabinet minister who chairs the committee, says the reproduction number, R, is lower in London. So, given that London is the motor of the economy, would it make sense to lift the lockdown in London first?

Sunak says his understanding is that that is not what the scientists are advising at the moment.

Q: Why won’t you tell employers what percentage of the furlough scheme they will have to pay from August? And why didn’t you take a sectoral approach?

Sunak says the change will come into effect in August. He says he will publish his plans by the end of this month. That will give employers ample time to prepare, he says.

And he says he looked at adopting a sectoral approach to the furlough scheme. But he decided it would be very difficult to enforce, particularly taking into account supply chains. So he went for a wider, more generous approach, he says.

Updated

At the Lords committee hearing Sunak said that the longer the recession went on, the more likely there was to be “scarring” (ie, people suffering a permanent to their wages or income).

'Not obvious there will be immediate bounce back' - Sunak plays down hope of swift recovery

In the Lords committee Sunak says it is not obvious that there will be an immediate bounce back. Asked about the likely shape of the recovery, he said:

We all would hope that it is as swift and strong as it can be. We are getting data from around Europe and around the world as countries are progressively easing and lifting restrictions.

It is not obvious that there will be an immediate bounce back. It takes time to get back to the habits that they had. There are still restrictions in place. Even if we can re-open retail, which I would very much like to be able to do on 1 June, there will still be restrictions on how people can shop, which will have an impact likely on how much they spend. And those things will all take time. So I think, in all cases, it will take a little bit of time for things to get back to normal, even once we’ve re-opened currently closed sectors.

Updated

UK facing 'severe recession the likes of which we haven't seen', says Rishi Sunak

Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, has just started giving evidence to the Lords economic affairs committee.

He said that by the end of the year he expected unemployment to be in double figures.

He also said Britain was facing “a severe recession the likes of which we haven’t seen”. He told the peers:

Although we have put unprecedented mitigating actions in place, I certainly won’t be able to protect every job and every business. We’re already seeing that in the data, and no doubt there will be more hardship to come. This lockdown is having a very significant impact on our economy. We are likely to face a severe recession, the likes of which we haven’t seen, and of course that will have an impact on employment.

Updated

Government publishes proposed draft free trade agreement with EU

The UK has published its terms for a free trade agreement with the European Union as it looks to increase pressure on Brussels to back down over its demands. Michael Gove, the Cabinet Office minister, told MPs in response to an urgent question earlier that the government had decided to make public the UK’s draft legal texts, with a 291-page draft comprehensive free trade agreement among the 12 documents to be published this afternoon.

The draft treaty is here (pdf). And the rest of the documents being published today (mostly related draft treaty agreements) are here.

Updated

Updated

Northern Ireland records further seven coronavirus deaths, taking total to 489

And the health department in Northern Ireland has recorded a further seven deaths, taking the total to 489. The details are here.

Wales records further 17 coronavirus deaths, taking total to 1,224

Public Health Wales has recorded a further 17 deaths, taking the total to 1,224.

More than 2m households have applied for universal credit since crisis started, DWP figures show

More than 2m households have applied for universal credit, the UK’s main social security benefit, since the coronavirus lock down started to hit the economy in mid-March, latest figures from the Department for Work and Pensions show.

Between 16 March, when social distancing guidance came into effect, and 12 May, there were 2,042,560 “declarations” – where people signed up for universal credit help because they had lost their job or had taken a big cut in pay.

Since 23 March, when lockdown was formally announced, there have been 1,771,910 household applications. Not all will be followed through or successful – either because claimants move back into work, or they are ineligible because they have more than £16,000 in savings.

Universal credit applications reached a daily peak on 27 March of 103,310. Although volumes have dipped – there were 23,680 on 12 May – they remain significantly higher than pre-crisis levels. On 1 March there were just 4,090 applications.

The government heralded the record figures as proof that the digital universal credit system was holding up under pressure.

However, the DWP has come under fire after reports that new claimants were worse off after applying for universal credit because the application automatically triggered the cancellation of existing in-work benefits.

When claimants realised they were ineligible for universal credit because their savings levels were too high, they found that DWP rules prevented their tax credit award being reinstated, leaving them hundreds of pounds out of pocket, the BBC reported.

Updated

Seven-year-old child among 174 new Covid-19 deaths in English hospitals

A child of seven was among 174 new Covid-19 deaths, NHS England has said.

The new fatalities bring the number of people who have died in hospitals in England after testing positive for coronavirus – or where Covid-19 is documented as a cause of death – to 24,913. The full details are here (pdf).

NHS England said six patients – aged 45 to 90 – of the 174 who died had no known underlying health conditions, suggesting the seven-year-old who died had some form of existing medical issue.

Yesterday, the Department of Health and Social Care released figures saying the UK’s Covid-19 death toll, including fatalities in the community, was 34,796.

Updated

Children as young as 11 could be recruited in “large numbers” by county lines drugs gangs if secondary schools do not fully reopen until September, a police and crime commissioner has said.

The West Midlands’ Labour commissioner David Jamieson, who is also a former teacher, said children aged 11-14 could be “swept up” by criminals because they were not in lessons during the Covid-19 lockdown.

It comes as the government has announced it wants some primary school pupils to be back in lessons “at the earliest” by 1 June, and “face-to-face support” for older secondary pupils with upcoming exams. But local authorities have instructed schools not to reopen because of safety concerns.

Jamieson, speaking at the region’s strategic policing and crime board, said he was also concerned about boys who may find themselves out of work after furlough ends, falling into crime. Commenting on the reopening of some schools in England from June, he said:

I very much welcome the reopening, as long as it’s safe to do so. But I have a concern that one group of children was not mentioned and that’s children in earlier secondary years, 11 to 14 years of age.

Years 7, 8 and 9, there was no intention of them going back to school before September. Now that is profoundly concerning to me – large numbers of younger children, those more likely to be swept up by the gangs and taken into county lines getting into all sorts of other things, very undesirable things.

Those children will be available for those criminals to take them on. I think the government needs to urgently look at that. That if the schools are going to reopen there is going to have to be some ongoing education for those younger teenagers as well.

It could be making provision for them to have good-quality distance learning or having some time in the school so they keep contact with their studies.

Updated

Downing Street rejects claims care homes forced to take coronavirus patients without proper support

And here are two of the main lines from the Downing Street lobby briefing.

  • The prime minister’s spokesman rejected claims that care homes were forced to take coronavirus patients without proper support. The spokesman said:

No care home should be forced to take back recovering Covid patients if they don’t feel that they can provide the appropriate care. We have been clear on that throughout. The NHS are now testing all people leaving hospital in advance of their discharge to care homes.

The allegation that care homes were forced to take patients with coronavirus being discharged from hospital, who then spread the infection, has been made repeatedly. Two articles have put the case particularly powerful. In this one (paywall) in the Sunday Times this weekend an anonymous care home boss said:

On March 17, Sir Simon Stevens, the NHS chief executive, said hospitals had to get 90,000 beds cleared, so they needed to get 30,000 people out. So they sent patients with no tests into care homes. They said: “We don’t need tests — you’ve just got to take them.”

Well, I’ve now got two homes with Covid-19. We can trace it. In both homes it came from residents bringing the virus from hospital. So when the manager of another of my homes rang to tell me he’d refused, I said categorically: “Well done.” That home has 90 beds, and to this day it is still Covid-free.

And in this Telegraph column (paywall) cited by Sir Keir Starmer at PMQs last week Ambrose Evans-Pritchard wrote:

A Covid cardiologist at a top London hospital – friendly to Boris – has been so incensed by the daily charade of bogus omniscience that he vented his spleen in an email to me on Sunday night. It is a poignant indictment, so I pass along a few snippets.

Basically, every mistake that could have been made, was made. He likened the care home policy to the Siege of Caffa in 1346, that grim chapter of the Black Death when a Mongol army catapulted plague-ridden bodies over the walls.

“Our policy was to let the virus rip and then ‘cocoon the elderly’,” he wrote. “You don’t know whether to laugh or cry when you contrast that with what we actually did. We discharged known, suspected, and unknown cases into care homes which were unprepared, with no formal warning that the patients were infected, no testing available, and no PPE to prevent transmission. We actively seeded this into the very population that was most vulnerable.”

  • The spokesman confirmed that ministers are ultimately responsible for government decisions. This was promoted by a question about Thérèse Coffey’s comment this morning suggesting scientists were to blame for bad government decisions. (See 9.32am.) The spokesman said:

The prime minister is hugely grateful for the hard work and expertise of the UK’s world-leading scientists, we’ve been guided by their advice throughout and we continue to do so. Scientists provide advice to the government, ministers ultimately decide.

This will be seen as an attempt to persuade government scientists that they are not being lined as the scapegoats for the widely-anticipated inquiry into the UK’s handling of this crisis. Whether the scientists will feel reassured or not is another matter.

Updated

Access to places of worship will have to be supervised, says leader of Catholic church in England

Access to places of worship will have to be “supervised” when they reopen as the country eases out of the Covid-19 lockdown, according to the head of the Catholic church in England and Wales.

Speaking on a Zoom panel about the safe reopening of places of worship, Cardinal Vincent Nichols suggested different sections of churches could be closed off each day to allow cleaning to take place. Acknowledging that supervision will be required, he explained that “it’s not as if the church doors will be flung open and say: ‘come in when you want.’”

Places of worship come under step three of the government’s recovery strategy, meaning they cannot open until 4 July at the earliest.

Nichols, the archbishop of Westminster, said: “I think one thing is very clear, access to a church in the foreseeable future will be supervised, so it’s not as if the church doors will be flung open and say: come in when you want. There will have to be people there, the whole process will have to be supervised.”

He added: “Each day a different section of the church might be made available, it doesn’t have to be the whole church, the whole time.

“So you could have the right hand back part for one day, and then the next day it will be the next session, so that would enable a cleaning routine to be more feasible, and it would leave parts of the church unused for maybe three days, which would help in terms of the hygiene.”

Nichols said last week that Catholic churches should be allowed to reopen before Pentecostal churches, or mosques owing to their different styles of worship.

Updated

At at Commons committee this morning Ros Pritchard, the director general of the British Holiday and Home Park Association, said “vigilante” members of the public had been reporting people staying in holiday homes - not knowing they were key workers, not holidaymakers.

Asked about a nervousness among communities at the prospect of visitors, she said:

We’ve had vigilantes. When we’ve got holiday parks, say with NHS workers because we’ve been accommodating key workers when we could, we’ve had vigilantes checking up and reporting them to the council and the police - who are these people on your holiday park, what are they doing there? That negative, anti-feeling is going to be an issue.

Pritchard also said that seasonal tourism businesses were effectively looking at “three winters in a row” and that, while businesses were “hanging in there”, some could start “going to the wall” in October without ongoing support.

At the Lords science committee this morning (see 12.19pm) Prof John Edmunds, professor of infectious disease modelling at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and a member of the governments’ Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, said the study of other coronaviruses suggested “potentially bad news” for hopes that humans could develop a long-term immunity from Covid-19. He explained:

You can see that antibodies decline over time from survivors of Sars [severe acute respiratory syndrome, a form of coronavirus]. So after a couple of years, their antibodies have declined quite significantly.

We can also see from other coronaviruses, from ones that cause coughs and colds, that individuals again do seem to not have particularly long-term immunity to many of those viruses, allowing them to get reinfected later.

So that’s potentially bad news for us, that immunity may not last that long against this virus.

Updated

Here are some of the main points from Nicola Sturgeon’s press conference in Edinburgh.

  • Sturgeon rejected suggestions that the Scottish government was engaged in a cover-up when it failed to notify people who might have been infected with coronavirus at the Nike conference in Edinburgh in February. At least 25 people at the conference contracted coronavirus, but people who may have been in contact with them at the venue were not told. Sturgeon said that an incident management team was in charge, and that it acted independently. She said other people were not alerted out of concerns for patient confidentiality. She said that to have publicised the incident at that stage could have led to individuals being identified. This was not a “deliberate attempt to cover up”, she said. She said she could understand why people thought that had been the wrong decision. But she would not go as far as saying herself that it had been the wrong decision given the circumstances at the time.
  • Sturgeon insisted that there had been “good cooperation between the different nations of the UK” in handling coronavirus.
  • She defended the decision to discharge patients into Scottish care homes when there was not a proper testing regime in place. She said at the time it was vital to free up hospital capacity.

Matt Hancock has acknowledged the importance of learning from other countries in dealing with coronavirus after an MP highlighted that there have been no deaths in care homes in Hong Kong or South Korea.

In the Commons, Labour’s Sarah Owen asked: “The health and social care select committee just heard evidence that there has been not one single care home death in Hong Kong or South Korea, despite their close proximity to China and shorter time to prepare for this crisis.

In comparison, the UK has now tragically seen over 10,000 deaths of loved ones in care homes. How can the government describe this as a success and isn’t it time now to learn from other countries who have genuinely put a protective ring around their care homes?”

In response, Hancock said: “Well yes absolutely, it is important to learn from everywhere around the world and this epidemic has had a different shape in different parts of the world, and as she knows, a very significant impact throughout Europe.”

Updated

Calderdale council in Yorkshire has become the latest local authority to advise its schools not to open on 1 June, defying government policy.

The Labour council leader, Tim Swift, said: “the clear professional advice we have” is that not all of the government’s five tests for opening schools were being met, citing concerns over the local rate of infection and limited access to testing. He added:

There is not enough evidence that the levels of infection in the community are low and falling; and we are not confident that there is guaranteed access to testing, so that in the event of a case both the individual concerned and all their contacts can be identified and rapidly tested for the virus.

Our priority as a council and as a Labour group throughout this crisis has been to put the safety and wellbeing of our community first. For these reasons, whilst we want our schools to plan for opening up to more children when it is safe to do so, we are strongly advising schools that they should not be doing this as soon as the 1 June.

Updated

Matt Hancock has been forced to explain why there was no requirement to test people for Covid-19 who were being discharged from hospital into care homes until weeks into the lockdown.

Asked by the shadow health minister Liz Kendall in the Commons about the apparent delay in implementing testing for those going back to care homes from hospitals, Hancock highlighted the importance of infection-control procedures. It comes amid fears that care homes may have unknowingly received Covid-19 patients hospitals early in the crisis.

Kendall asked: “NHS England rightly asked hospitals to free up at least 30,000 beds to cope with the virus, but can he explain why there was no requirement to test those being discharged to care homes, the very group most at risk, until 15 April?”

In response, Hancock said:

She raises the question of discharges, and I understand the questions that have been asked about discharges into care. It’s important to remember that hospital can be a dangerous place for people, as well as saving lives. It also can carry risks and does and so it is appropriate … in many cases for people to be discharged from hospital and safer for them to go to a care home.

What’s important is that infection control procedures are in place in that care home and those infection control procedures were put in place at the start of this crisis and have been strengthened … as we’ve learned more and more about the virus as we’ve gone along.

Updated

Matt Hancock responds to Commons urgent question on care homes

In the Commons, the health secretary, Matt Hancock, has been pressed over the government’s “slow” handling of the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic in care homes.

As the Office for National Statistics figures released this morning showing there have been nearly 10,000 coronavirus-related deaths in care homes in England and Wales, Hancock faced an urgent question from shadow health minister Liz Kendall.

Hancock defended the government’s approach, saying deaths in care homes were falling. The ONS figures show care home deaths fell to 1,666 in the week ending 8 May, from 2,423 deaths in the previous seven days – a decrease of 31%.

Kendall highlighted that more than 23,000 more people had died in care homes in the first four months of this year compared with last, accusing ministers of being “too slow” to tackle the impact of the virus in social care.

She challenged Hancock to explain why guidance stating care homes were “very unlikely” to be infected was not withdrawn until 12 March. (the Labour leader, Keir Starmer, previously raised this issue with Boris Johnson last week).

In response, Hancock said: “She refers to the 13 March guidance, that was only a matter of days immediately after the risk to the public was raised on medical advice. And the guidance that was in place until then, as she probably knows, explicitly stated that... that guidance was in place while community transmission was low and said it would be updated as soon as community transmission went broader and that’s exactly what we did.”

Updated

In her opening statement at the press conference Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, also said that the Scottish government was spending an extra £33m on measures to get people back to work. Most of the money would go to Fair Start Scotland and would be used to support young people, disabled people and lone parents, she said.

Sturgeon says Scotland has recorded 29 more coronavirus deaths, taking total to 2,134

Nicola Sturgeon, the Scottish first minister, has just started giving her daily briefing.

She says a further 29 coronavirus deaths have been registered in Scotland, taking the total to 2,134.

Leading government science adviser says school opening a political decision, not scientific one

At the start of the coronavirus crisis politicians and their scientific advisers seemed united, an impression created by Boris Johnson appearing with Prof Chris Whitty, the government’s chief medical adviser, and Sir Patrick Vallance, its chief scientific adviser, at the first government press conferences.

But these days Johnson rarely shows up and the scientists and the politicians are engaging in the preliminary rounds of a ‘blame game’ battle that will no doubt come to a grim and acrimonious conclusion at the long-awaited public inquiry.

Ministers stress they have been following the science, and this morning Thérése Coffey, the work and pensions secretary, took that formula to its logical conclusion by effectively saying it meant that, if the wrong decisions were taken, that was because the scientists gave the wrong advice. (See 9.32am.)

This morning Prof John Edmunds, professor of infectious disease modelling at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and a member of Sage, the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, has been giving evidence to the Lords science committee and he offered a different perspective. His department has been responsible for some of the modelling that has helped to inform government decision making. But, when asked about whether schools should open, he insisted that ultimately this was a decision for politicians, not scientists. He said:

Clearly the decision to open primary schools or not is a political one. It is not a scientific decision. Scientists can offer some advice.

It looks like the risk to children is low and that the vast majority don’t have significant symptoms ... It may be that they are less likely to transmit to others as well, and so the risk to others may be relatively low.

But, overall, you have to weigh up those risks with other things, risks to the community, problems with children - clearly, we can’t keep children off school forever. Weighing all of those things needs to be done by politicians.

The National Trust expects to take a £200m hit to its finances after closing all its properties during the lockdown.

Hilary McGrady, director general of the National Trust, told a parliamentary committee the financial blow had come after the charity shut its properties on 20 March.

The £200m figure represents nearly a third of the charity’s total income in the last financial year, meaning the organisation is facing a significant shortfall.

While McGrady said that National Trust parks and gardens would be first to reopen, the charity’s houses are unlikely to reopen before late August. She told the digital, culture, media and sport select committee that the estimated impact of Covid-19 “is going to be in the region of about £200m to the trust this year”.

The trust is “desperate to open” as soon as it is safe to do so, she said, highlighting the value of the spaces for the nation’s mental wellbeing. She added:

Our members want us to be open, but they do want us to open safely. And we will do this in a really controlled and careful way, that’s why we’ve introduced the booking system.

“But it is incredibly important just for, apart from anything else, the mental wellbeing of the nation that they can get out, and access places like the National Trust.

“We offer incredibly safe spaces for people to be able to visit and just, you know, have a bit of space and have access to nature and we think it’s really important to get doing that sooner rather than later.”

The trust received a total income of £634m in 2019, according to its accounts, up from £595m the year before. In 2019 it banked £192m from investment income. The market value of its investments totalled £1.3bn last year.

Updated

Wagamama is to reopen dozens of its restaurants across the country to expand its home delivery service.

The Japanese-inspired restaurant chain, which has been forced to shut its doors to customers amid the Covid-19 pandemic, launched a trial at five of its delivery kitchens earlier this month.

After the “successful” trials in London and Leeds, the company will reopen 24 more sites on Thursday with a further 20 next week. In total, the chain hopes to have 49 sites open for delivery by the start of June, expanding to 67 by the end of the month.

Sites opening on Thursday include those in Newcastle, Sheffield city centre, Liverpool, Manchester Spinningfields, as well as several in London.

Wagamama said it had devised a schedule of reopening new sites that would allow staff to slowly return to delivery-only work at their own discretion. Emma Woods, the Wagamama chief executive, said:

Over the past couple of months our focus has been on creating a safe working environment for our team members and our two-week trial has enabled our teams to return to work safely.

The next logical step for us is to open additional sites throughout the UK, this will still very much form a test and learn approach for the business.

Updated

The Queen has discussed “the state of the world” and the Covid-19 pandemic with the Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau.

The 94-year-old monarch, who is also Queen of Canada, spoke to Trudeau yesterday – the day of her official birthday in the country. Trudeau tweeted:

We talked about the state of the world, Covid-19, and more. I also thanked her for the hopeful messages she has sent during these difficult times, and I wished her the very best this Victoria Day.”

Victoria Day - 18 May - is the Queen’s official birthday in Canada. As monarch of the Commonwealth, the Queen has a strong bond with Canada. It has been her most frequent overseas destination, visiting it more than 20 times.

As a young child in the 1970s, Trudeau met the Queen several times through his father, Pierre Trudeau, who was one of Canada’s longest-serving prime ministers.

Updated

The government has issued a response to the ONS death figures figures out today. (See 9.44am, 10.11am, 10.42am and 10.56am.) A spokesperson for the Department for Health and Social Care said:

Every death from this virus is a tragedy and our deepest sympathies go out to the families who have sadly lost relatives.

Supporting the social care sector throughout this pandemic is a priority. We are working around the clock to give the social care sector the equipment and support they need.

We are ensuring millions of items of PPE are available to care workers, using our increased testing capacity to test care home residents and staff regardless of symptoms and introducing our new £600m infection control fund to help prevent the spread in care homes.

Treasury quadruples value of loans available to big businesses through coronavirus scheme

The Treasury has quadrupled the value of loans available to larger businesses affected by coronavirus. In an announcement this morning it said that companies would now be able to receive up to £200m from the coronavirus large business interruption loan scheme, which previously had a maximum payout of £50m. It said that loans under the expanded scheme would be made available to firms from Tuesday 26 May.

So far only £359m has been made available to businesses through the coronavirus large business interruption loan scheme. But almost £19bn has been made available through the Covid corporate financing facility, more than £8bn through bounce-back loans, and £6bn through the coronavirus business interruption loan scheme.

Updated

And here are two charts from the ONS report that illustrate excess death figures. The figures relate to England and Wales.

This chart tracks the figures for all deaths, and the figures for coronavirus deaths. Excess deaths are those above the five-year average.

And this chart shows that, although deaths not involving coronavirus were above average for six weeks in early spring, in the week ending 8 May deaths not involving coronavirus were actually below the long-term average. But, overall, the death rate that week was still well above the long-term average because of the coronavirus deaths.

Updated

Today’s ONS figures show that the proportion of coronavirus deaths taking place in care homes rose in early May, with care home deaths accounting for 42.4% of coronavirus-related fatalities registered in England and Wales in the week ending 8 May. This was up from 40% the previous week.

This chart from the ONS report helps to illustrate this point.

Updated

The Treasury has this morning published new figures about the impact of its various coronavirus job and business support schemes showing, among other things, that 8m jobs have now been furloughed, at a cost so far of £11.1bn.

High rate of blood clots among Covid-19 patients, study finds

A “significant percentage” of patients admitted to hospital with Covid-19 had blood clots in their lungs, a study has revealed. As PA Media reports, research carried out by a team at the Brighton and Sussex Medical School (BSMS) has found infection caused by coronavirus to be associated with a high incidence of venous thromboembolism, a condition in which a blood clot forms in the deep veins of the leg, groin or arm and can travel to the lungs, leading to pulmonary embolism.

Of the 274 consecutive cases of Covid-19 admitted to hospital, 21 (7.7%) were diagnosed with venous thromboembolism. Blood clot on the lungs was seen in 16 of those 21 of these cases.

The study, published in the Clinical Medicine Journal, was carried out at the Brighton and Sussex university hospitals NHS trust, including two acute hospital sites in southern England.

Updated

The figure given by the ONS statistician Nick Stripe for UK excess deaths (see 10.11am) is broadly in line with the forecasts for this number that other specialists have been producing.

Yesterday the Financial Times’ Chris Giles, who has been doing his own modelling for excess deaths, posted these on Twitter.

And yesterday Jamie Jenkins, a former ONS official, produced his own latest daily estimate.

Excess deaths in UK reached almost 55,000 in early May, says ONS

Nick Stripe, head of the health analysis and life events division at the Office for National Statistics, told the BBC a few minutes ago that the total number of excess deaths in the UK - the number above what might expected at this time of year, judged by a five-year average, was just under 55,000 by early May.

Scientists, and ministers, have repeatedly said that the excess death figures will ultimately prove the most reliable guide as to how badly the UK has been hit by coronavirus.

Stripe told the BBC:

Across England and Wales up to 8 May we are now looking at an excess deaths figure of just under 50,000. If we look at the UK as a whole, that is just under 55,000 excess deaths.

So the gap between Covid-related and excess is about 25% of excess deaths are not explained by Covid being on the death certificate. And that is now a key area of research for us to get underneath that, to understand that.

Stripe said that within the next couple of weeks the ONS planned to publish more research looking at why the excess deaths figure was so high. But he said a report published by the ONS on Friday, on deaths in April, did shed some light on what was happening. He went on:

That showed that deaths from dementia and Alzheimer disease had gone up very, very significantly during April, as had deaths from something known as “ill-defined conditions”. That is often where the certifying doctor puts things like frailty or old age on the death certificate. Usually in the very old, where there might not be a specific morbidity, but the patient has been unwell, you’ll often get these ill-defined conditions. And they were up significantly as well in April.

Stripe said there could be two reasons for this increase. First “normal care pathways” could be disrupted; ie, fewer patients were going to hospital, because the hospitals were concentrating on coronavirus. Second, coronavirus might be a factor in these deaths, without doctors being able to confirm that. He explained:

There may be some cases where Covid is present but it is not obvious to the certifying doctor that that is the case.

And it may be the case that this big jump in the number of dementia and Alzheimer deaths could explain part of that reason there. It could well be that in the very old, if the patient is not able to describe their symptoms very well, there may be many other co-morbidities, that perhaps the doctor has not felt able, in the absence of a positive test, to put Covid on the death certificate.

Updated

Excess deaths in England and Wales running at 3,081 in first week of May, ONS says

The Office for National Statistics has just published the latest weekly death figures for England and Wales. They cover the week up to Friday 8 May (or week 19, as the ONS calls it).

Here are the main points.

  • Overall deaths in England and Wales in the week up to 8 May were down for the third week in a row, at 12,657. But they were still 3,081 above the five-year average for that week.
  • Some 31.1% of the deaths in the week up to 8 May involved coronavirus being mentioned on the death certificate, down from 33.6% the previous week.
  • Overall deaths in care homes in the week up to 8 May were down, from 6,409 to 4,248. But the proportion involving coronavirus was up from 37.8% the previous week to 39.2%.

Britain’s farmers and carmakers will be protected under a new post-Brexit trade regime that will result in 60% of goods coming into the country tariff-free from the start of next year, the government has announced. Our colleague Larry Elliott has the full story here.

The government news release on the announcement is here. And here is the government’s UK global tariff tool, where businesses can check the proposed tariff on any particular item.

Updated

Government should not blame scientists, says new Royal Society president

Sir Adrian Smith, the incoming president of the Royal Society, has given an interview to the Times, saying that ministers should not say “we are simply doing what scientists tell us”. He said:

The danger is if the politicians keep saying: ‘We’re simply doing what the scientists tell us’ that could be awkward. Politicians ultimately must make the decisions.

There will be a postmortem on this. But I think the use of science and the re-establishment of experts is something that won’t go away. And I think it won’t be the backlash that, you know, the scientists, got it wrong.

Smith starts as head of the Royal Society in November and said he expected his term in the role to be marked an in-depth review into Britain’s response to the coronavirus crisis.

I wonder what Smith will make of comments by the work and pensions secretary to Sky News this morning that “if the science was wrong, advice at the time was wrong”.

Updated

Good morning. I’m Andrew Sparrow, joining the blog for the day.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies will probably be surprised to hear Thérèse Coffey, the work and pensions secretary, saying this morning that there are a “substantial number” of job vacancies around. (See 9.11am.) The IFS has published what it plans to be the first of regular reports on the number of job vacancies available. “Job vacancies are an early indicator of economic activity,” it explains. And as Frances reported earlier, it found that when the lockdown was first announced, job vacancies dried up almost entirely. “New postings on 25 March were just 8% of their levels in 2019,” it says.

The report says that there has been some improvement since mid-April, but that “this has been entirely driven by vacancies in health and social care”.

Xiaowei Xu, one of the authors of the IFS report, said:

Job vacancies almost completely dried up in March and are now only tentatively recovering in the health and social care sector and barely at all in other parts of the economy. Health and care jobs generally require a high level of training, which means that workers who have been furloughed or made unemployed will struggle to fill these jobs. For those who remain employed, the collapse in job vacancies will severely limit their ability to move between jobs, which is an important channel for wage progression especially among younger workers.

The fact that there has been no recovery in vacancies in the most deprived local authorities is also worrying, especially because it will be risky to travel far for work on public transport.

There are 'substantial number' of job vacancies, says work and pensions secretary

The work and pensions secretary, Thérèse Coffey, has been speaking to broadcasters this morning. She insisted that people who had lost their jobs in the coronavirus crisis could find roles in the agricultural sector this summer.

She told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that we should be prepared for the unemployment rate to “increase significantly”, but insisted “there are a substantial number of vacancies already”. Asked where the vacant roles were, she said:

There’s an aspect of retail. There are quite a lot of vacancies or employment wanted in our agricultural sector to help in our near future. Those very much need to be filled as well.

Research from the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) published today found a sharp fall in job vacancies since the beginning of the coronavirus crisis. They found that, by the time the lockdown was announced, firms had stopped posting new vacancies almost entirely, with new postings on 25 March just 8% of their levels in 2019.

Coffey defended the government’s coronavirus testing record as having improved from a “standing start”. Asked about criticism by the Commons science and technology committee (see 8.13am), she told BBC Breakfast:

We had a small amount of capacity at the very start, it was solely based on Public Health England’s capability of being able to have about 2,000 tests a day. We had little capacity early on, I recognise that, we have got a lot of capacity now.

I think from pretty much a standing start, roughly in about mid-February I think it was, to get to a capacity and actual tests being done of 100,000 within about six weeks, I think is pretty full-on and actually I think something we can look on with pride.

Updated

Plans to restore palace of Westminster on hold

Plans to restore the Houses of Parliament – at a cost of £4bn – have been put on hold, due to the “impact of the current health crisis on public finances”.

The independent body set up to manage the project said it would reassess the decision to relocate MPs and peers while the work was under way. The announcement comes after the National Audit Office (NAO) warned last month that costs for the scheme should not be allowed to slip in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

Sarah Johnson, CEO of the Sponsor Body, said:

The restoration and renewal of the Houses of Parliament will be the biggest and most complex heritage project ever undertaken in the UK.

The Sponsor Body has been set up to ensure that the project is delivered in the most efficient way that delivers value for money.

It is entirely appropriate that we should pause at this time to consider the validity of recommendations made over five years ago before either the Sponsor Body or Delivery Authority was formed.

The impact of the current health crisis on public finances and parliament’s ways of working has made it even more essential that we review both the strategy for relocating the two houses and the scope of the restoration of the palace.

Updated

Number claiming unemployment benefits surged in April, figures show

The number of people claiming unemployment benefits surged in April as the coronavirus lockdown hit the economy, figures released this morning show.

The UK claimant count jumped by 69% during the month, as 856,000 more people received universal credit and jobseeker’s allowance benefits in April. That lifted the claimant count to nearly 2.1 million people, from 1.24 million in March.

In the south-west, the claimant count almost doubled during the month.

The Office for National Statistics cautions that this is only preliminary data, and will include some people still in work who can now apply for universal credit after chancellor Rishi Sunak relaxed the entitlement rules to help people affected by the pandemic.

But economists say it’s a very alarming increase – the biggest since the 1970s – showing the economic damage caused to the UK in the last few months.

The ONS has also found that the number of paid employees fell by over 457,000 in April, to around 28.57 million people – another sign that unemployment is rising as the UK falls into recession. The unemployment rate for January-March dropped to 3.9%, but that mostly covers the period before the lockdown began.

Our business live blog has more details and reaction –

Updated

Guardian economics correspondent Richard Partington reports that employers’ groups have been warned that government wage subsidies for disabled and vulnerable workers could be drastically scaled back from August under Treasury plans to wind down its Covid-19 furlough scheme.

Charities and social enterprise employers have been told by the government that its plan to bring the coronavirus job retention scheme to an eventual close this autumn does not currently include an exemption for vulnerable workers.

Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, announced last week that the furlough scheme – under which the government pays 80% of staff wages up to £2,500 a month – would be extended until October. However, state support will be scaled back from August, with employers expected to contribute to maintain a wage packet of at least 80% for furloughed workers.

Although a final decision has yet to be taken, the chancellor is believed to favour a universal approach to scaling back the scheme for all employers, without tailoring it to reflect a gradual return to work for firms and workers.

Testing capacity "inadequate", say MPs

The Commons science and technology committee has criticised the government for what it described as “inadequate” coronavirus testing capacity throughout the pandemic.

The group of MPs identified several lessons to learn from the UK’s handling of the outbreak, and criticised a lack of transparency over some crucial decision-making. They called on the government to “urgently” build up capacity for contact tracing, a key tactic in helping ease existing lockdown measures.

In a letter to the prime minister assessing evidence to the committee during the pandemic, its chairman Greg Clark – the Tory former business secretary – said:

Testing capacity has been inadequate for most of the pandemic so far. Capacity was not increased early enough or boldly enough. Capacity drove strategy, rather than strategy driving capacity.

Clark also said Public Health England (PHE) had repeatedly failed to answer questions over the “pivotal” decision to ignore mass testing in favour of other tactics.

The decision to pursue an approach of initially concentrating testing in a limited number of laboratories and to expand them gradually, rather than an approach of surging capacity through a large number of available public sector, research institute, university and private sector labs is one of the most consequential made during this crisis.

From it followed the decision on 12 March to cease testing in the community and retreat to testing principally within hospitals.

He said the decision meant that residents in care homes and care home workers could not be tested at a time when the spread of the virus was at its most rampant. Clark wrote:

Had the public bodies responsible in this space themselves taken the initiative at the beginning of February, or even the beginning of March, rather than waiting until the secretary of state imposed a target on 2 April, knowledge of the spread of the pandemic and decisions about the response to it may have made more options available to decision makers at earlier stages.

Updated

Agenda for day

Here’s a little summary of some of what we can expect today.

The work and pensions secretary, Thérèse Coffey, is out speaking to broadcasters this morning. I’ll bring you the highlights from that.

At 9.30am, experts in social care from around the world will give evidence to the Commons health and social care committee about Covid-19 in care homes.

Also at 9.30, we will also get new data from the Office for National Statistics about the number of coronavirus-related deaths registered in England and Wales for the week ending 8 May.

The health secretary, Matt Hancock, will be summoned to the commons chamber at 12.30 for an urgent question on care homes.

The chancellor, Rishi Sunak, will give evidence to the Lords economic affairs committee at 3pm.

Updated

Young and old will be hardest hit economically, study finds

Good morning and welcome to the Guardian’s UK coronavirus live blog.

A study by the Resolution Foundation thinktank has found that younger and older workers are being hardest hit by the squeeze on earnings during the coronavirus crisis. More than one in three 18 to 24-year-olds, and three in 10 workers in their early 60s, are receiving less pay than they did at the start of the year. This compares with less than a quarter of workers aged 35 to 49.

The report – based on a survey of more than 6,000 UK adults between May 6 and 11 – warned that younger workers risk their pay being scarred for years to come, while older workers may end up involuntary retired well before reaching their state pension age. Maja Gustafsson, a researcher at the Resolution Foundation, said:

While young people are in the eye of the storm, they are not the only group who are experiencing big income shocks.

Britain is experiencing a U-shaped living standards crisis, with workers in their early 60s also badly affected.

That is why the government’s strategy to support the recovery should combine targeted support to help young people into work, with more general stimulus to boost demand across the economy and help households of all ages.

Official figures just out show that unemployment increased by 50,000 to 1.35 million in the three months to the end of March. (Important to note that lockdown didn’t start until 24 March.) Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Iain Duncan Smith – former Tory leader and former work and pension secretary – said “there was always going to be a big hit to the economy by locking down the economy”. He warned that there was a lag effect, so the numbers would get worse.

I’m Frances Perraudin and I’ll be bringing you the latest developments in the pandemic in the UK today. You contact me with tips and comments on twitter @fperraudin and on frances.perraudin@theguardian.com.

Updated

 

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