UK Covid inquiry: government accused of giving ‘very little’ advance thought to lockdown and being too focused on flu – as it happened

• Planning for a no-deal Brexit from 2018 “crowded out” government efforts to prepare for a pandemic and contributed to leaving the country unready, the first evidence session of the Covid public inquiry has heard.

• The Commons privileges committee has revealed that it received a letter from Boris Johnson at 11.57pm last night. It had been expected to publish its report into claims he misled MPs about Partygate tomorrow, but now it is not expected until Thursday. A report in the Times says it will find that Johnson had deliberately misled MPs. (See 4.25pm.) This is from my colleague Aubrey Allegretti.

• UK government borrowing costs have risen above the levels hit during Liz Truss’s disastrous premiership, after stronger than expected jobs and pay figures reinforced expectations that the Bank of England would raise interest rates next week.

• Labour has ruled out offering universal free childcare for children over nine months old but is considering a means-tested offer, sources have told the Guardian, as the party strives to prove its fiscal credibility.

• Rami Ranger, a prominent Conservative peer and donor, bullied and harassed a female journalist after she publicly criticised him and an organisation he runs, the Lords standards commissioner has ruled.

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Outgoing prime ministers should not be allowed to nominate people for peerages in resignation honours lists, the former Tory leader William Hague suggests. He has made the proposal in his Times column today. He says:

Good repairs can be quite small. Take prime ministers’ resignation honours, a tradition since 1895 already damaged by Harold Wilson taking it too far in 1976. Wouldn’t it be better to agree that such honours should only be for the unsung heroes behind the scenes, the staff who toil loyally night and day, for whom an OBE would be lifelong recognition, rather than a list of peerages that undermines the whole tradition?

That would be one tiny brick put back in the wall, building back respect for the system of government and its standards. We will need leaders who will find such bricks, and who will repair, not scorn, our institutions.

And Robin Allen KC, representing the Local Government Association and Welsh Local Government Association, told the Covid inquiry that one problem was that central government did not trust local government. He said:

Too often during the pandemic central government did not fully understand the way local government in England worked and what it could contribute.

It seemed as though there was a lack of trust in local authorities, even perhaps a misplaced confidence by central government as to what it could achieve itself.

The Covid inquiry hearing has finished for the day. Earlier, Steven Ford KC, who is representing the Association of Directors of Public Health (ADPH), used his opening statement to complain about the way central government had sidelined local health officials. He said:

[Health officials] should have been consulted earlier and more comprehensively by national bodies.

Firstly, at the start of the pandemic, the Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC) did not hold an up-to-date contact list for directors of the public health in various local authorities.

Secondly, at the start of the pandemic directors were learning about new policies and guidance at the same time as members of the public were when the televised 5pm daily briefings began to be broadcast.

They were expected to impose these policies without the necessary structures and support mechanisms having been in place.

Labour has ruled out offering universal free childcare for children over nine months old but is considering a means-tested offer, sources have told the Guardian. Kiran Stacey and Rowena Mason have the story here.

Boris Johnson “was informed that Nadine Dorries’s peerage had been rejected as far back as February”, the Times reports, in a story attributing the information to senior government sources.

Dorries, the former culture secretary, has claimed that she and Johnson did not find out that Dorries was left off his resignation honours list until it was published last Friday. In their story Oliver Wright and Henry Zeffman report:

Dorries said that she had been told by Johnson last week that she would be included on the list and accused Rishi Sunak of “duplicitously and cruelly” in blocking her from getting a peerage.

But her account has been disputed by the government, which said Johnson had been given prior warning that Dorries could not take up a peerage unless she made clear she would immediately stand down as an MP.

Dorries says that even on Thursday night last week Johnson was assuring her that she was still on the list.

In her interview with TalkTV last night, asked if she thought it was possible that Johnson might have been lying to her, she replied: “100%, I don’t think that’s true.”

The Commons privileges committee report into Boris Johnson had been expected tomorrow. But, according to Newsnight’s Nicholas Watt, publication has been delayed.

According to a story by Steven Swinford in the Times today, the report will conclude that Johnson deliberately misled MPs about Partygate. Swinford says:

Boris Johnson deliberately misled parliament over the Downing Street parties scandal, a committee of MPs will find …

Martin Reynolds, Johnson’s principal private secretary at the time, advised him in December 2021 that he should remove a claim from a statement to the Commons that “all guidance had been followed at all times”. He questioned “whether it was realistic to argue that all guidance had been followed at all times”. Johnson removed the line from his opening statement but repeated the assertion during a debate in the Commons less than half an hour later. The Times has been told that the committee views this as evidence that Johnson deliberately misled the Commons …

The former prime minister’s comments at his March hearing with the committee have also been deemed misleading. Johnson said his attendance at several No 10 leaving drinks, where staff consumed alcohol without social distancing, was a “necessary” part of his working life as prime minister.

He said he did not believe for “one second” that rules had been breached because the guidance only required workplaces to distance as far as possible. This claim has been rejected by the committee, which has highlighted guidance stating that where social distancing could not be followed businesses “should consider whether that activity needs to continue for the business to operate”.

Back at the Covid inquiry Neasa Murnaghan KC, counsel for the Department of Health in Northern Ireland, addressed the point about Brexit, and whether it hindered pandemic preparedness (see 12.08pm), in her opening statement this afternoon.

She conceded that planning for a no-deal Brexit did result in less time being devoted to pandemic planning than might otherwise have been the case.

But she said that, overall, the impact was positive. That was because no-deal planning involved things like stockpiling medicines and medical equipment, and creating multi-agency teams, that proved useful during the pandemic.

UPDATE: Murnaghan said:

I should also … make a brief remark about the preparations Northern Ireland had undertaken for a no-deal EU exit.

Whilst these preparations did divert some of our focus away from pandemic preparedness planning, as was no doubt the case for all four nations of the United Kingdom, on the positive side the many aspects of additional training, improvements in the resilience of supply chains and the preparedness to manage the potential consequences were, when considered overall, thought to be advantageous.

The benefits included local and regional increased buffer stocks and stockpiles for medicines and medical devices, clinical consumables and the enhanced multi-agency command and control training undertaken by all Northern Ireland departments and multi-agency responders.

The SNP is at risk of an “extinction event” if it does not change course, Alex Salmond, the former Scottish first minister, and former SNP leader, has said.

In an interview with the Holyrood Sources podcast, Salmond also said that Nicola Sturgeon would have suspended herself from the party if she had still been leader, following her arrest on Sunday.

Sturgeon served as Salmond’s deputy until he resigned as first minister in 2014 and she succeeded him. For many years they were very close, but they fell out bitterly over the Scottish government’s handling of the sexual assault allegations against Salmond (he was eventually cleared) and Salmond now leads Alba, a rival nationalist party.

Speaking about the SNP’s current plight, Salmond said:

The SNP as a political party is facing a potential – I was going to say, extinction event – maybe that’s a bit alarming, but if you don’t change course, then that’s where it’s heading.

Momentum works two ways. It can work in your favour, very substantially. Reverse momentum is equally compelling. And they have to shift the narrative. The narrative now is that the SNP find it difficult to run a tap in the Scottish parliament, is embarked on confrontational issues with the Scottish population, which are causing significant damage to these groups in society, but more so to the SNP’s reputation. There is a real underlying feeling that key public services are not being run as they should be run.

Salmond said Humza Yousaf, the current first minister, would need to show “assertive leadership” to rescue the party.

But he implicitly criticised Yousaf’s decision not to suspend Sturgeon after she was arrested by police on Sunday as part of the inquiry into SNP finances, saying that if Sturgeon was still leader, she would have suspended a colleague in these circumstances. He said:

Nicola Sturgeon would have suspended Nicola Sturgeon under these circumstances. No question about that.

Greg Hands, the Conservative party chair, has been campaigning in Uxbridge and South Ruislip today, ahead of the byelection taking place as a result of Boris Johnson’s resignation. He says a key issue for his party will be their opposition to expansion of the Ulez low emissions zone to outer London by Sadiq Khan, the Labour mayor.

In an analysis, ITV’s Harry Horton says this could make winning the seat, where Johnson had a majority of 7,210, more challenging for Labour than some people assume.

People who drive in the zone in a non-compliant vehicle will need to pay a daily charge of £12.50. Supporters of the scheme say it will help clean up the air in some of the most polluted parts of London.

Several Conservative-led councils have launched legal action against the expanded scheme and protests have popped up in areas soon to be included. In short, it’s left some voters feeling very angry …

If the Conservatives pick an anti-Ulez candidate (which they are almost certain to), it’s not inconceivable that this by-election could start to be seen as a referendum on Ulez, which is much trickier territory for Labour.

Picture this scenario: the mid-Bedfordshire and Selby and Ainsty byelections are more comfortable ground for the Conservatives. Both seats enjoy health 20,000+ majorities. If Rishi Sunak can keep those constituencies blue – and cling on in Boris Johnson’s former seat – then he will head into autumn with renewed confidence he can turn things around for his party ahead of a general election.