A three-year political impasse and ongoing budget uncertainty left the health system in Northern Ireland less well equipped to deal with a pandemic in 2020 than it had been a decade earlier, the region’s chief medical officer (CMO) has said.

PA Media reports that Sir Michael McBride told the Covid-19 Inquiry that services were existing on a “hand-to-mouth” basis in the years leading up to the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic at the outset of 2020.

Giving evidence in Belfast he said:

I think that it is absolutely preferable to have a government in Northern Ireland, to have ministers in place. I think we were fortunate during the pandemic that we did have ministers in place and a government in place.

I think that that period between 2017 for three years until three weeks before the pandemic started was a difficult period. We headed into this pandemic with a less resilient health and social care system, budgetary uncertainty, significant workforce challenges and vacancies, (and) a system that was long overdue for change.

The Northern Ireland assembly held elections in March 2017, but did not formally convene after voting until January 2020.

Ministers are considering banning a standard design feature for cycle lanes, the Guardian has learned, in a move campaign groups warn could make building separated bike routes on many main roads effectively impossible, and put riders at risk.

Mark Harper, the transport secretary, is examining whether there should be a halt in the use of what are known as floating bus stops, where a segregated bike lane is routed behind a bus stop and passengers cross the cycle lane to reach it.

These have been used very widely in other European countries for years, and in some UK cities for more than a decade. They allow cyclists to keep out of the way of buses which regularly pull in and out, which makes the routes safer, and the bike lanes are more likely to be used by children and less confident cyclists.

However, there has been criticism that some of the UK examples – especially in London – are not designed sufficiently well, and make using buses intimidating and sometimes dangerous for blind people.

Read more of Peter Walker’s report here: Transport secretary considers ban on floating bus stops in UK cycle lanes

John Swinney has chaired his first cabinet meeting as first minister of Scotland.

He said “Today, my colleagues and I embark on a new chapter as we collectively work to build a better, brighter future for the people of Scotland. It is my greatest honour to lead us forward on that journey – one that will drive economic growth, tackle the climate crisis and eradicate the scourge of child poverty in our country once and for all.”

From the “Well, this is awkward files …”

Earlier today home secretary James Cleverly posted to social media saying “When Keir Starmer talks about illegal migration, this is who he wants to be the home secretary. This is who he would put in charge of stopping the boats.”

He coupled it with a shot of an FT article with the headline “Yvette Cooper urges ‘immoral’ UK to take 10,000 refugees” which referenced at that time Syrian asylum seekers fleeing the war there and heading to Europe.

Cooper has just pointed out in a reply:

Er, James…… This is your Government’s policy to help 20,000 Syrian refugees, announced just after this article! Which four days later you welcomed!! “I welcome David Cameron’s announcement that the UK will provide sanctuary to thousands more Syrians”

She links to an article on his own website, where Cleverly goes on to say “It is right and proper that we prioritise the help to these people rather than those already in safe countries in mainland Europe or those who might otherwise turn to traffickers who have a vested interest in using more dangerous routes.”

In the article dated 5 September 2015 he continued, “We must also work with the international community to make people trafficking the most unappealing criminal activity on the planet. There should be no safe place for those who trade in this human tragedy.”

PA Media reports that in the Lords, former Conservative minister Baron Blencathra has done the opposite of putting the cat among the pigeons, by suggesting that the UK should ban cat flaps.

As David Maclean he served in the early 1990s in John Major’s government as minister of state for the environment and countryside, and he said today there is “no justification whatsoever” for cat owners to take a “laissez-faire attitude” by letting their pet “go in and out when it pleases”.

He said outdoor cats should be required to wear collars and bells, as he pointed to research suggesting this helps reduce the number of birds killed by felines.

Peers were supporting a proposed law to create two new offences of cat and dog abduction in England and Northern Ireland. The Bill would make it an offence to take a cat or dog from the lawful control of another person, and moves to recognise the emotional distress of losing a pet, not just treating them as property theft.

The challenges facing Rishi Sunak’s Rwanda deportation plans have been underlined once again as protesters sprang into action to block what they believed was going to be a removal of asylum seekers from a London hostel.

Dozens of people – ranging from young activists to some local people – are maintaining a line outside Driscoll House in Southwark after reports were shared on social media that removal was happening.

It comes a week after hundreds of protesters blocked an attempt to collect asylum seekers from a hotel in Peckham and take them to the Bibby Stockholm barge. The Home Office also abandoned plans to move asylum seekers in Margate to the Bibby Stockholm in the wake of protests there.

Activists from the anti-raids of groups said today that residents inside Driscoll House had been told that a removal was happening, but the protesters said they will remain outside the hostel until they know it has been cancelled.

“We’ve had a presence here since about six o’clock this morning because we were aware that they are moving the residents earlier and earlier in an attempt to try to reduce the amount of resistance they’re gonna get,” the Guardian was told by an activist from Southwark and Lambeth Anti Raids.
“The police showed up then and we believe they prevaricated about whether people would be moved, before about eight cop vans came back.”

At least one van from the Metropolitan police’s Territorial Support Group, which includes officers who police demonstrations and marches, remained in the area hours later. A banner saying “Homes not Borders” was hunt up outside the hostel, where activists were drawing up rotas of those who will remain at the site.

Here is a video clip of Keir Starmer’s announcement this morning about Labour’s proposed immigration policy. He said Labour would scrap the Rwanda deportation scheme and replace it with a new specialised border security unit if it won power.

Scottish Labour appears to have benefited from the Scottish National party’s leadership turmoil, with a new poll putting Labour four points ahead in a Westminster vote.

The Savanta poll, published today by the Scotsman, will puncture the SNP’s buoyant mood after it managed to replace Humza Yousaf seamlessly with John Swinney this week after Yousaf’s crisis with the Scottish Greens.

The fieldwork for the poll was carried out from 3 to 8 May, after Swinney emerged as the clear frontrunner and his only serious rival, Kate Forbes, stepped aside. SNP officials believe his appointment will arrest the party’s steady decline in the polls.

The first to be released after Swinney’s confirmation as first minister, Savanta puts Scottish Labour on 37% and the SNP on 33%, with the Scottish Conservatives trailing on 17%.

Savanta calculates that would hand Labour 28 Scottish seats – a dramatic improvement after winning just one at the last election, and see the SNP’s fall heavily from 43 to 18 seats.

Scottish Labour, which announced on Friday it has selected the chief executive of Medical Aid for Palestinians, Melanie Ward, to stand in Cowdenbeath and Kirkcaldy at the election, is also celebrating after beating the SNP in a council byelection.

A Labour gain from the Conservatives, Mary Hume won in Kilwinning, Ayrshire, on first preference votes with a 20-point lead over the SNP.

Jackie Baillie, Scottish Labour’s deputy leader, said: “Scotland is being let down by chaotic and dysfunctional SNP and Tory governments. After years of division and decline, Scotland needs change – and Scottish Labour is ready to deliver it.”

PA Media has spoken to first minister of Wales, Vaughan Gething, who says he asked Tata to delay closing the blast furnaces at Port Talbot and to wait until a Labour government is in place in Westminster before making a final decision. He said:

I made clear [to Tata] the case that the Welsh government’s prime position is we don’t want to see the final blast furnace turned off with the significant numbers of job losses that will entail.

I spoke to Keir Starmer before I came out, and the person who is the likely next prime minister made clear that he sees a manifesto offer that we’ll need more steel not less.

And just as I do, he does not want there to be an irreversible choice made just before a general election, that is only months away.

Education secretary Gillian Keegan has told the Times that parents working from home have contributed to a rise in students missing school days.

Keegan, the fifth different Tory education secretary since September 2021, told the paper “The Covid pandemic has had a major impact on school attendance” and that “still too many children whose attendance hasn’t recovered.”

“Every day a child is absent they will miss on average five to six lessons, time they never get back. It is unacceptable to take a deliberate decision to take your child out of school,” she said, adding:

There are still major challenges with data showing unauthorised holiday absence increasing by 25% and that there are regularly 50,000 more pupil absences on a Friday compared with Monday, which could be linked with many parents working from home.

The Times quotes Beth Prescott, a researcher at the Centre for Social Justice, saying “The main drivers of the school attendance crisis is mental health and anxiety in children. Despite the education secretary saying absence is a top priority, the actual response has not reflected that at all.”

Paul Whiteman, general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT), told PA Media “it is misleading to suggest that current rates of absence can simply be explained by parents allowing time off school on a whim. The issues we are seeing are the result of not just the pandemic, but a decade of Government austerity in which support for families has effectively been rationed.”

Rishi Sunak has tried to reiterate his “pragmatic” approach to net zero targets during a visit to Oxfordshire.

He said he had received a lot of “flak” for his environmental policies, but said “I’m not going to force you to spend £5,000, £10,000, £15,000 prematurely ripping out stuff, changing things, changing cars and boilers. Instead, we’ll get there in a more pragmatic way. That will be my approach to companies as well.”

Earlier this week the Guardian reported that a large number of climate scientist now believe the world is heading to global temperatures that reach at least 2.5C above preindustrial levels.

Our economics editor Larry Elliott offers this analysis of the latest GDP figures:

When you are in as deep a political hole as the current government you seize on any good news and there was plenty for Jeremy Hunt to choose from in the latest figures from the Office for National Statistics. The figures were proof that the economy was returning to “full health for the first time since the pandemic”, the chancellor said.

Yet when people look back on the early months of 2024 they will probably remember the relentlessly awful weather rather than a time when the economy was cooking with gas. Boom-boom Britain it certainly isn’t.

Britain’s growth performance during the current parliament has been extremely weak. National output as measured by gross domestic product is only 1.7% above pre-pandemic levels and adjusted for a rising population per capita, growth has actually fallen – by 1.2%. As things stand, this is on course to be the first parliament in living memory to have seen falling living standards over the term.

Read more of Larry Elliott’s analysis here: Latest GDP figures offer some better news – but boom-boom Britain it ain’t

Starmer has finished his press conference now.

Keir Starmer has been asked about whether providing “safe and legal” routes is part of the plan. He cites schemes for people from Hong Kong and Afghanistan, then continues on to say:

The really most effective way to stop the crossings is to break gangs that are running this in the first place because they are making a huge amount of money exploiting very vulnerable people. And they’re doing that with thinking that they’ve got impunity.

He criticises the government for claiming that international courts are preventing them from deporting people. He says:

I think it’s a mistake to think that it’s the international instruments such as the European convention on human rights that are the problem. By the end of this year, there’ll be 100,000 people who’ve arrived whose claims can’t be processed. That means they can’t be returned. That’s not the European Convention that says that. That’s just the government’s not processing the claim.

He says “Why are people who come here from Bangladesh not being processed? Sitting here, not going back? The government isn’t doing it. This is not difficult territory. It’s actually, get on, roll your sleeves up, process the claims, and get this system functioning properly. We shouldn’t overestimate and talk up the difficulty here. It’s basic competence. Seriousness, not gimmicks.”

Keir Starmer has launched an attack on the culture war debate that surrounds immigration, and says the character of politics in Westminster has to change.

“I dragged my party away from the allure of gesture politics, and I will do exactly the same to Westminster,” he says, having outlined that he believes the current culture in Westminster “rewards the grand gesture, the big talk, while disregarding that detailed practical action that over time, moves a nation forward step by step.”

He accuses the Tories of saying they want to reform the asylum system when some of them are acting in bad faith, and simply want to shut it down entirely.

Starmer is taking questions now.

Keir Starmer accuses the government of handing out “a Travelodge amnesty” and says he has no doubts that gangs are telling people on the French side of the Channel that they will be warmer and more secure in a hotel by travelling across the sea than by staying under canvas near Calais. He also says the current system has something about “Hotel California” to it – that the Tories put asylum seekers into hotels, but then because of the lack of processing, they can never leave.

Keir Starmer has accused Rishi Sunak of “magical thinking” with his plan to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda.

He said:

It’s not hard to see why the prime minister might want a path to deterrence without the hard graft, the boring work of fixing the wider system.

But I’m afraid like so much of what he says these days, it is magical thinking.

A symbol of the unquenchable Tory desire for the shortcut, the easy things, the sticking plaster. Gimmicks, not serious government.

Let me spell it out again, a scheme that will remove less than 1% of arrivals from small boat crossings a year cannot and never will be an effective deterrent.

Keir Starmer said “it’s great to have you on board” to Natalie Elphicke.

Yvette Cooper has gone on to say:

We’ve seen the sickening images of violence on the French coast. As gangs push more and more people into these flimsy dinghies, gangs that are part of a network of organised criminals making hundreds of millions of pounds in profits.

Those networks have taken root along our borders over the last five years. We cannot let them get away with it. And that is why we have been working with and hearing from national security experts, border security experts, looking at the experiences of security of successful security operations and approaches around terrorism in the past.

She cited Keir Starmer’s experience of “going after terror gangs and networks as director of public prosecutions”

She went on to say:

We cannot just stand by while our border security is undermined and lives are put at risk. And instead of the years of Conservative gimmicks, it is time to get a grip.

She then introduced Labour’s candidate for the next election in Dover, Mike Tapp. Elphicke is stepping down at the next election.

He outlined his own experience as a former soldier who served in Afghanistan and work at the National Crime Agency. He then introduced Starmer, saying he was “the leader we need at this time,” adding:

Somebody who rolls up his sleeves and grips a problem. Somebodywho rejects the cheap headline and the costly gimmick. He offers the leadership our country needs. The first duty of any government is to protect our borders, and with Keir Starmer, you have a patriot and a problem solver, someone who will get the job done.

Natalie Elphicke went on to say:

Nowhere is Rishi Sunak’s lack of delivery clearer on the issue of small boats. They are failing to keep our borders safe and secure. Lives are being lost in the English Channel while small boat arrivals are once again at record levels so far this year.

It is clear that Rishi Sunak has failed to keep our borders secure and cannot be trusted. A fresh approach is needed. An approach that puts out his heart a commitment to border security, which tackles the criminal gangs behind the small boats crisis and saves lives.

Shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper is speaking now.

Labour’s event in Dover has started with Natalie Elphicke MP speaking. I’ll bring you the key lines.

John Swinney has been talking about his government’s independence strategy, and insisting that the plan still stands to take winning the majority of seats at the general election as a mandate to negotiate independence with Westminster.

After scrapping the much-mocked post of minister for independence on Wednesday, Swinney has a fine line to tread in terms of strategy and keeping his party’s independence-supporting base content and willing to get out and campaign ahead of the upcoming general election.

The scrapping of that role was a symbolic move, a signal to the general voter that the party is focused on their cost of living concerns after a year of distraction from shock arrests, policy rows and internal strife.

But Swinney also has to keep previous SNP voters onside, and stop them drifting to Labour. Given that the party agreed the majority seats strategy for the general election at its conference last autumn, Swinney doesn’t have much room for manoeuvre on this, but it’s a strategy that a lot of SNP MPs are deeply unhappy about – they say it’s too confusing to explain on the doorstep, feeds opposition attacks that the SNP is obsessed with independence to the exclusion of voters’ day to day worries, and sets too high a bar.

Both Swinney and Humza Yousaf before him were keen to escape the “never-endum” process discussion of how a second vote could be held, and concentrate on persuading doubters by emphasising how much more could be done to ameliorate the impact of the cost of living crisis and Brexit with independence.

But one of the current problems that the SNP has is that – even though support for independence has never been higher, at roughly 50% – many supporters seem in no hurry for a second vote.

The Post Office Horizon IT inquiry is about to get under way again. Sir Wyn Williams is in the chair, and the witness is Rod Ismay, former head of product and branch accounting at Post Office limited. You can watch it here.

James Cleverly has posted to social media in response to Labour leader Keir Starmer talking up his plans for immigration policy. In his message, Starmer said:

People have a right to expect security at our borders. When I was the country’s chief prosecutor, we smashed terrorist gangs abroad. If I’m privileged enough to become prime minister, we will smash the people-smuggling gangs.

Cleverly has retorted:

Labour’s big ideas: Scrap Rwanda eg. have no deterrent. Amnesty for small boat arrivals because they would scrap Rwanda and have nowhere to send them. Re-brand Small Boats Command, which was set up by this Conservative government and is led by a British army officer.

In its polling, YouGov has consistently found that people care more about the economy and the health service than they do immigration as an issue.

John Swinney has defended the SNPs record in government while admitting the party has been through a difficult period.

Speaking to Sky News he said:

We’ve got really good record in government. We’ve transformed lives of people in Scotland. We’ve lifted 100,000 children out of poverty. And we’ve transformed the infrastructure of Scotland. We’ve strengthened our education system. We have very low levels of crime in Scotland as a consequence of the approach to justice that we take.

All of these things are strong aspects of the record of the Scottish National party government.

I want to build on that. I’ve got to move the party forward. But I acknowledge that the period of the last couple of years has been very, very difficult for the party, and we’ve got to recover from that.

He went on to say

I’ve got to bring people together. Join the party together … to make sure that everybody feels they’ve got a part to play in building the future of Scotland by having a strong and successful Scottish National party.

And what’s crystal clear to me from any analysis of history is that Scotland does well when the SNP does well. And I need to get the SNP into a strong condition to fight the Westminster elections, to do really well in the Westminster elections, to continue building support for independence, to win the whole of elections in 2026, and to deliver Scottish independence. That’s what I’m all about. That’s what I’m here to do.

He told Sky News that independence could be delivered within five years “because the arguments for it are compelling”.

He also, questioned about the role of Kate Forbes, said that “The protection of the rights of LGBT individuals in our society is absolutely fundamental to my government – the protection of those rights and the enhancement of those rights.”

If you fancy something for your ears, then Today in Focus features Kiran Stacey, the Guardian’s political correspondent, talking to Helen Pidd. “Rishi Sunak has been talking about the possibility of a hung parliament this week, using the local election results to try to gee up his Tory MPs,” Kiran tells Helen. “But just as he’s doing that we see a new poll out on Thursday from YouGov showing Labour now has a 30-point lead in the national polls.”

You can listen to it here: Rishi Sunak staggers on – but for how long?