Afternoon summary

Johnson did briefly ignore rules on mask wearing during hospital visit, trust admits

Hospital managers have admitted that Boris Johnson did briefly ignore a request to wear a face mask when he visited Hexham general hospital on Monday.

In response to members of the public who asked about the incident, officials at Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust issued a statement conceding that at one point Johnson had to be reminded to put on a mask. They said:

In response to your communication about the coverage you have seen of the prime minister pictured without wearing a face mask at Hexham general hospital, the trust would like to assure you that infection prevention and control has always been and continues to be of utmost priority in all of our hospitals and in all other Trust sites.

Our mask-wearing rules are very clear, and it is important to note that everyone that was part of the official visit to Hexham general hospital on Monday 8 November were formally advised and reminded of these rules on the day.

Information was included in the written programme.

These rules include information about mask-wearing and other infection prevention and control measures, such as hand-washing, tucking away loose clothing [ties], and having rolled-up sleeves.

After the prime minister left a welcome meeting, he walked along a mezzanine corridor, for a very short period of time, without a mask.

This brief moment was captured on camera.

As soon as this was identified he was given a mask and he put it on.

The prime minister did wear a mask for the majority of the visit.

He didn’t have a mask on when he did his media interviews, but this was with agreement with everyone else in the room, who did wear a mask.

We ask that everyone visiting our hospital sites continue to follow our infection control and prevention rules.

We hope this helps to clarify the situation and we apologise for any upset this has caused.

On Monday, when pictures of Johnson in the hospital not wearing a mask first appeared, the trust put out a tweet defending the PM, saying he had been wearing a mask in every clinical area he visited.

Updated

Updated

Richard Ratcliffe says meeting with Foreign Office minister about his wife 'depressing'

Richard Ratcliffe, whose British-Iranian wife, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, has been detained in Iran since 2016, said that he found a meeting with a minister about her case “depressing” and that it left him “a little bit more deflated today than I was this time yesterday”.

Ratcliffe, who has been campaigning outside the Foreign Office on hunger strike for 19 days, was invited to see James Cleverly, a Foreign Office minister, for an update on talks between the UK government and the Iranian deputy foreign minister, Ali Bagheri Kani, who is visiting London.

After his meeting Ratcliffe described it as:

If I’m honest, quite a depressing meeting. In terms of what we got told, well, not much.

Ratcliffe said that Cleverly told him he had raised his wife’s case with his Iranian counterpart, but Ratcliffe said Cleverly could not say when things might move forward. Ratcliffe said:

I said to him [Cleverly] at the end: ‘I come away with no hope. I felt that in your strategy it’s all carrots to Iran. There’s no stick’. I can’t see what’s stopping them from continuing to play games with Nazanin. I think by being here, Nazanin is probably safe for a few weeks. But what’s to stop them threatening to put her in prison again?

Ratcliffe believes his wife, who was originally jailed for five years on what are widely seen as bogus spying charges, is being held as a hostage by the Iranians because they want to use her case to pressurise the UK government into repaying a decades-old £400m debt.

Ratcliffe said that he asked Cleverly about this issue, but that Cleverly “clammed up”.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe is currently on parole and staying at her parents’ home in Tehran, but she fears being returned to jail at any moment.

Ratcliffe said that he would continue his hunger strike at least for this evening, but that at some point soon he would end it. “I made a promise to Nazanin, I made a promise to my family, mum in particular, and to the family doctors, that I won’t take it too far,” he said.

This, from my colleague Patrick Wintour, explains the background to the £400m debt whose non-payment is preventing Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s release.

Updated

Sir John Major, the former prime minister, has issued a statement paying tribute to FW de Klerk, the former president of South Africa, who has died. Major’s premiership overlapped with De Klerk’s presidency. Major said:

FW de Klerk was a man who realised that apartheid was morally and politically wrong, and acted to bring it to an end. He freed political prisoners, including Nelson Mandela, ended racial segregation and faced down hostility in his own party.

He worked with Mr Mandela to fully dismantle apartheid and return South Africa to democracy and the community of nations.

He deserves to be remembered as a brave politician who helped change the future of his country for the better.

Updated

According to the Sun’s Jack Elsom, government whips are furious with Sir Geoffrey Cox for claiming yesterday that the chief whip, Mark Spencer, approved his decision to vote by proxy from the Caribbean.

Allies of Mark Spencer hit back hard against Geoffrey Cox's claim that the Chief Whip authorised a proxy vote while he did legal work in the BVI.

One Minister blasts: "He's trying to blame the Chief but it's all nonsense...

— Jack Elsom (@JackElsom) November 11, 2021

"Most people were given a proxy in lockdown because the Speaker didn't want loads of people in Parliament.
"It wasn't to give him free rein to trot off to the Caribbean. The whips are absolutely seething...

— Jack Elsom (@JackElsom) November 11, 2021

"For a long time now he's made it clear that everyone has to work around him.
"Frankly if Geoffrey doesn't want to be here he should f*** off."

— Jack Elsom (@JackElsom) November 11, 2021

Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, told Sky News that concern about a “sense of corruption” at Westminster is genuine. Speaking from Cop26, she said the recent stories about Tory sleaze had been a distraction from the work being done at the climate crisis conference. But she said the controversy could lead to these problems being addressed. She said:

It has also shone a light, and perhaps this is a good thing, on some of the other issues that need to be resolved around politics, and Westminster politics in particular.

There is a real concern - I certainly don’t use this word lightly - [about] a sense of corruption at the heart of the Westminster system, and that has to be rooted out.

A pharmaceutical firm has asked for an apology and has not ruled out future legal action after the health secretary told MPs its coronavirus vaccine would not get approval for use in the UK, PA Media reports. PA says:

Valneva, a French company which has a production facility in Livingston in Scotland, had its previous order of around 100m doses torn up by the UK government, with Sajid Javid saying the product would not get the go-ahead from the regulator.

But the company, visited by Boris Johnson in January, has since been cleared to supply tens of millions of doses across Europe.

David Lawrence, Valneva chief financial officer, told BBC Radio Scotland Javid’s comments in September had caused reputational damage, had financial implications for the company, and “put a question mark next to our vaccine”.

Lawrence said Mr Javid was “very clearly wrong” to state the vaccine would not secure approval from the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA).

He added: “We would love to hear an apology from him. The damage he did to our company and our commercial discussions was quite significant and we’re still awaiting an apology for those remarks.”

Javid originally told MPs the company “would not get approval” by the regulator, but later amended Hansard, the official parliamentary record, to state the vaccine “has not yet gained” clearance.

Lawrence said Valneva was still deciding whether or not to sue the government over Javid’s comments.

Asked for its response to Lawrence’s comments, and whether an apology would be forthcoming, the Department of Health and Social Care said: “Clinical trials for the Valneva candidate vaccine have not yet been completed. As such, our independent medicines regulator - the MHRA - has not approved the Valneva candidate vaccine for use in the UK.”

Updated

EU to tell Frost Brexit talks will fail unless he ditches ECJ demand

The EU’s Brexit commissioner will tell David Frost that negotiations over Northern Ireland are doomed to fail unless he drops an “unattainable” demand over the role of the European court of justice, my colleague Daniel Boffey reports.

Ministers arrived at No 10 for cabinet at around lunchtime. They were meant to be having an awayday at Chequers, but the venue got switched to Downing Street for diary reasons. However we were told that the event was going to go ahead as planned, with the discussion lasting longer than usual.

According to a report in the Times (paywall) at the weekend, several ministers were told to prepare five-minute presentations explaining how their departments were contributing to the levelling up agenda. They were also told to bring A3 maps showing their plans, and it looks as if the work and pensions secretary was one of them.

According to the Times report, the main presentation will come from Michael Gove, the new levelling up secretary, and Andy Haldane, the former Bank of England chief economist now working for the government as a levelling up adviser.

The discussion will cover the contents of the much-awaited levelling up white paper due to be published before Christmas.

Updated

Dominic Cummings, Boris Johnson’s former chief adviser, is not impressed by the drunk opposition MPs story. (See 10.06am.) In a single tweet he manages to deride both lobby journalists and the Johnson government (now he’s left it) - two of his pet hates.

Even by the lobby's abysmal standards, getting suckered by 'hammered MPs in wheelchairs' as a dead cat is poor performance

— Dominic Cummings (@Dominic2306) November 11, 2021

It was Johnson himself who first publicised the term “dead cat” for a media distraction ploy, in an article citing (but not by name) the Australian election strategist, Lynton Crosby. In an article in 2013 Johnson wrote:

Let us suppose you are losing an argument. The facts are overwhelmingly against you, and the more people focus on the reality the worse it is for you and your case. Your best bet in these circumstances is to perform a manoeuvre that a great campaigner describes as “throwing a dead cat on the table, mate”.

That is because there is one thing that is absolutely certain about throwing a dead cat on the dining room table – and I don’t mean that people will be outraged, alarmed, disgusted. That is true, but irrelevant. The key point, says my Australian friend, is that everyone will shout: “Jeez, mate, there’s a dead cat on the table!”; in other words they will be talking about the dead cat, the thing you want them to talk about, and they will not be talking about the issue that has been causing you so much grief.

But today’s story doesn’t count as a dead cat because it is just not good enough to overshadow sleaze. It’s more of a dead mouse, if that.

Updated

Labour has called on Boris Johnson to reach a deal with the EU over the Northern Ireland Brexit protocol and end the “poison of division” it says the government has provoked.

The shadow Northern Ireland secretary, Louise Haigh, said the the Conservative party had been “reckless” in its approach to Northern Ireland where a fragile peace has held for more than 20 years.

In a speech to the George J Mitchell Institute for Peace in Belfast, she urged the prime minister not to provoke “further poisonous instability” in the weeks ahead over the Northern Ireland protocol.

Her comments come as Lord Frost yesterday lifted the immediate threat of triggering article 16, the mechanism to allow one side suspend parts of the protocol as a last resort to safeguard communities from societal or economic damage.

Speaking the House of Lords yesterday, Frost said indicated talks would continue for a “short number of weeks” but maintained that the conditions had been set for article 16.

Haigh said:

The Conservative’s reckless custody of the Good Friday agreement has sown division and undermined stability.

This is not a partisan point, nor one that gives me any satisfaction.

Peace in Northern Ireland is too precious to be a plaything of partisan politics.

The Labour party recognises and pays tribute to the work done by John Major,who helped lay the ground for the Good Friday agreement.

But we cannot ignore the damage that has been done.

Updated

Updated

Nigerian anti-corruption tsar says PM must 'do better' to justify claims about UK's high probity standards

Yesterday, at his press conference at Cop26, Boris Johnson said declared that “the UK is not remotely a corrupt country”. It was a surprising thing for him to say because the journalist asking him the question had not suggested to him that Britain is a corrupt country, and so it sounded like a hurt response from a PM needled by opposition claims in recent days that he has been enabling corruption and worried about how he is seen internationally.

Today that has triggered a rebuke from an anti-corruption adviser to the Nigerian government. In an interview with Finance Uncovered, an investigative journalism website, Prof Sadiq Isah Radda, executive secretary to the presidential advisory committee against corruption in Nigeria, said that the UK was a “tangential enabler” for corruption and that London was “the most notorious safe haven for looted funds in the world today”. He explained:

There are no thieves without receivers. Without safe havens for looted funds, Nigeria and Africa will not be this corrupt.

Johnson’s comment was a response to claims that some British MPs have been acting corruptly. Radda was focusing on a different, but not wholly unrelated, issue, and in his interview he was particularly critical of the UK government’s failure to implement a long-promised proposal to require public registration of the beneficial ownership of offshore companies and trusts. This would expose the real identity of people using offshore structures to conceal their wealth. Radda challenged Johnson to deliver this law. On corruption Johnson “can do better by matching words with concrete actions”, Radda said.

Radda explained:

UK law allows the global elite to loot their countries and rush to London. No wonder London swims in other people’s blood and sweat ...

As a country and as a people, corruption has done monumental damage to us and we have to bring a stop to it. Safe havens, such as London, as well as their governments, have to support and help Nigeria. The muted response by British politicians suggests complicity.

The practice under UK law where anyone buying a house or apartment can hide their identity from public records that are submitted to the Land Registry if they purchase the property through a company registered in an offshore secrecy haven is very disappointing, disturbing and contradictory.

Updated

According to the BBC, Labour activists in Coventry are trying to organise trigger ballots that could lead to two of the city’s MP, Taiwo Owatemi and Zarah Sultana, facing reselection battles. It says some activists are unhappy about the way Owatemi and Sultana were chosen before the 2019 general election, because local councillors were excluded from the shortlists. A successful trigger ballot leads to an MP having to face a full reselection battle, with other candidates standing, although a rule change passed at the Labour conference has made it significantly harder than it was for a reselection contest to be triggered.

Updated

Andrea Leadsom, the Conservative former leader of the Commons who tabled the amendment backed by the government last week shelving the proposal to suspend Owen Paterson from the Commons for 30 days, has written to colleagues apologising for what happened, my colleague Aubrey Allegretti reports.

Andrea Leadsom has written to Conservative MPs to apologise for the handling of last week's amendment she proposed to the Owen Paterson suspension motion.

She has had plenty of supporters privately - one says the government "can sod off giving her the blame for it".

— Aubrey Allegretti (@breeallegretti) November 11, 2021

As Aubrey revealed in a very good backgrounder last week, although the amendment was tabled by Leadsom, in effect it was a government amendment cobbled together at the behest of Paterson’s allies, who believed he had been the victim of an injustice (a view shared by few people who have actually read in full the report criticising him). Leadsom was asked to put her name to it because she is seen as less polarising than the key Paterson supporters, and her work as Commons leader setting up a new system for dealing with complaints of bullying and sexual harassment by MPs was widely admired.

The more Tories who do apologise for what happened last week, the more awkward it gets for Boris Johnson, who is refusing to say sorry himself.

Boris Johnson is planning to travel to Paris tomorrow for a meeting with the French president, Emmanuel Macron, according to the Telegraph’s Joe Barnes.

Hearing Boris Johnson will travel to Paris on Friday to meet Emmanuel Macron. Perhaps a deal on fish in the offing?

— Joe Barnes (@Barnes_Joe) November 11, 2021

Updated

Boris Johnson has welcomed the joint plan from the US and China to work together on cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

I welcome the strong show of commitment from China and the US last night to step up climate action this decade and keep 1.5C in reach.

This is a boost to negotiations as we go into the final days of @COP26 and continue working to deliver an ambitious outcome for the planet.

— Boris Johnson (@BorisJohnson) November 11, 2021

Updated

Standards watchdog urges government to act 'rapidly' to implement reforms to limit time MPs can spend on second jobs

The UK’s most prominent standards watchdog has urged the government to act rapidly to address concerns about MPs’ second jobs.

In an interview with the Today programme, Lord Evans, the former MI5 boss who now chairs the Committee on Standards in Public Life, said that there was no need for a lengthy review of what needed to be done because proposals were already “on the table”. He told the programme:

I’ve been slightly slightly frustrated over the last few days at people calling for a review of MPs’ second jobs, and this and that. Our committee ... has made recommendations on a number of these areas, including only last week. Those are on the table. They offer a way forward now, which means that we can be confident that our standards bodies are independent, that our public life is being defended, and we don’t need to set up a royal commission or a public inquiry.

Evans accepted that the Commons standards committee (a different body) will also be publishing recommendations soon. But after that report was out, it should be possible to “take action on these things rapidly”, he said.

At the moment, as there is such an upwelling of public concern on standards issues, there is an opportunity to look at what is already on the table, what has already been researched, what we’ve consulted widely on.

Asked what should be done about the rules around second jobs for MPs, Evans said that his committee did a lot of polling before it published a report on this topic in 2018 and he said the views of the public were “quite sophisticated”. He went on:

They recognised that there were certain jobs that it was right and appropriate that MPs should be able to hold, in addition to their main responsibilities. But we recommended that MP should not accept any paid work to provide services such as parliamentary strategists or advisers or consultants, because that was in tension with their main job.

And we said that the critical thing was that nothing that an MP does should get in the way of their ability to work in support of their constituents. So the amount of work that they do, the sort of work, needs to be judged against that. If somebody is spending a huge amount of their time on a second job, then they can’t be made maintaining the support for their constituents.

The 2018 report recommended a ban on MPs working as political consultants. This would have prevented the Owen Paterson scandal, because if this rule had been in place, Paterson would not have been able to take up the two consultancy posts that got him into trouble in the first place. Paterson was found to have broken the current rules, not because he had those jobs, but because he used them for paid advocacy, which is already banned.

But the 2018 report also said the rules should be changed so that any outside work undertaken by MPs should be “within reasonable limits and should not prevent them from fully carrying out their range of duties”. Given what has emerged about the scale of Sir Geoffrey Cox’s legal work, this rule would almost certainly force him to cut back. According to the Daily Mail, in some years Cox has devoted almost 30 hours a week to his legal work. (Cox said yesterday that he regularly works 70 hours per week, and that casework for his constituents is always given primary importance.)

The Committee on Standards in Public Life does not investigate specific cases of wrongdoing. But it was set up to monitor standards across all areas of public life, and to make recommendations for improvements.

Updated

Record 5.8m people in England waiting for hospital treatment

The number of people in England waiting to start routine hospital treatment has risen to a new record high, PA Media reports.

Labour attacks on Tories over second jobs could erode trust in politicians generally, says minister

In his interview with Times Radio Paul Scully, the business minister, also suggested that Labour’s attacks on the Conservatives over second jobs could turn out to be counter-productive. He said:

What I’m saying is that it tends to erode trust in politicians in general, ultimately. So what seems like a short term political attack line, if you like, from other parties, tends to just erode the trust in politicians in general.

But Scully did accept that wrongdoing needed to be tackled, and he accepted that the government’s decision last week to whip its MPs to vote for the motion sparing Owen Paterson from a Commons suspension was “regrettable”.

Updated

SNP MPs accuse Tories of smearing them with false drinking claims to distract attention from sleaze

With the sleaze allegations of the last week largely focused on the Tories, CCHQ must have been anxious to have something to throw at the opposition, and that perhaps explains a bizarre story in some of the papers today claiming that two SNP MPs and one Labour MP got drunk on a flight to Gibraltar on a visit organised by the armed forces parliamentary scheme. Ben Wallace, the defence secretary, is reportedly planning to complain to the SNP and Labour leaders about the conduct of their MPs.

Paul Scully, the business minister, was on interview duty for No 10 this morning, and in an interview with Times Radio he was happy to comment on the story. Asked if he agreed the story was “not a good look”, he agred. He went on:

We’ve got to show responsibility. We are leaders. We - all 650 MPs - are leaders in their own right. And to be held to a high standard and clearly, you know, with the armed forces over there, we’ve got to show ... our respect to our armed forces as well.

Some of the reports have not named some or all of the MPs, in what may be a sign that in-house lawyers fear some of the allegations would not stand up in court.

But the two SNP MPs named by the Daily Telegraph have used Twitter to deny the story. These are from David Linden.

Honoured to be visiting service personnel in Gibraltar as part of the Armed Forces Parliamentary Scheme. Appreciating the opportunity to meet with and thank service personnel for everything they do. pic.twitter.com/EmdB9NG5wG

— David Linden MP (@DavidLinden) November 10, 2021

2/3 - Incredibly disappointed by what appears to be a bizarre Tory smear campaign in the media tonight but I’ll leave the politics to others.

— David Linden MP (@DavidLinden) November 10, 2021

3/3 Instead, I’ll continue to focus on participating in briefings with service personnel, meetings with local officials, as well as continuing to undertake training exercises and hear first hand from those who serve in the Armed Services here in Gibraltar.

— David Linden MP (@DavidLinden) November 10, 2021

And these are from Drew Hendry.

I'm honoured to be attending the Armed Forces Parliamentary visit to Gibraltar, ahead of Armistice Day, to see the brilliant work of our troops. pic.twitter.com/xUqaYdaGo6

— Drew Hendry MP #ScotlandsChoice (@drewhendrySNP) November 10, 2021

It's deeply disappointing that Tory MPs have made false claims in a shameless attempt to divert attention from the Tory corruption scandal engulfing Westminster.

That is a matter for their conscience. I'll focus on doing my job and respecting our troops as we mark Armistice Day

— Drew Hendry MP #ScotlandsChoice (@drewhendrySNP) November 10, 2021

Updated

Rishi Sunak says Tories must ‘do better’ on standards than they did last week

Good morning. The Tory sleaze news horror show shows no signs of abating, and there are two aspects to it that must be causing alarm in No 10. First, this isn’t just an obsession for papers on the left; papers on the right, that normally support the Conservatives, have embraced it with gusto. And, second, once a narrative like this gains traction (“Tory MPs are on the take”, to put it bluntly), then it becomes open season for the media, with all sorts of stories that in the past might have been ignored suddenly getting scrutiny because they now qualify as newsworthy. This story has reached that point.

Today’s papers are still full of revelations about Sir Geoffrey Cox. The Guardian focuses on the £6m he has earned from his legal work, the Daily Mail has done a similar calculation, while the Daily Mirror has a go at him for claiming for accommodation in London while at the same time renting out a flat he owns in the capital. But it is not just Cox who is in the news. Other Conservatives facing uncomfortable questions about second jobs include Julian Smith, the former Northern Ireland secretary (in the Guardian), Mark Pawsey (in City AM), Philip Dunne, a former defence minister (in the Times), and Alun Cairns, the former Welsh secretary (in the Times). It is not anything like as dire as the 2009 MPs’ expenses scandal, but there are some parallels.

This morning we have had a potentially significant intervention from Rishi Sunak, the chancellor. In interviews primarily about the growth figures (mildly disappointing), he said the government needs “to do better” on standards than it did last week. He told Sky News:

On the broader point and just reflecting over recent events, I think for us as a government, it’s fair to say that we need to do better than we did last week and we know that.

In one respect this is not surprising. Ministers have admitted that it was a mistake to get MPs to vote for the motion shelving the Owen Paterson report, and so of course the government has to do better. But, because they are coming from a cabinet minster who (at least until now) has not been implicated in controversy about sleaze or second jobs, and one seen as the favourite to be next PM, Sunak’s words also sound like an implied rebuke to Boris Johnson.

Here is the agenda for the day.

9.30am: NHS England publishes its latest waiting time figures.

Morning: Boris Johnson chairs what is set to be a lengthy meeting of cabinet. Originally they were planning a cabinet awayday at Chequers. The venue has been switched to Downing Street, but the agenda will be the same, focusing on levelling up, ahead of the publication of the levelling up white paper later this year. There will also be a political cabinet.

12pm: John Swinney, the deputy first minister, takes first minister’s questions in the Scottish parliament.

I try to monitor the comments below the line (BTL) but it is impossible to read them all. If you have a direct question, do include “Andrew” in it somewhere and I’m more likely to find it. I do try to answer questions, and if they are of general interest, I will post the question and reply above the line (ATL), although I can’t promise to do this for everyone.

If you want to attract my attention quickly, it is probably better to use Twitter. I’m on @AndrewSparrow.

Alternatively, you can email me at andrew.sparrow@theguardian.com

Updated

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