If there is one area that the government can point to as having had a successful pandemic, it would be the speed at which the UK has been able to rollout the vaccines for Covid-19. The Telegraph has even reported
that their Whitehall sources believe that every adult will be able to receive their first jab by the end of June. Andrew Marr put this scenario to the Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, who despite sticking to the government script, suggested that this target was not completely unfeasible:
DR: We’re making good progress… The entire adult population, we want to have been offered a first jab by September… That’s the roadmap. We think we’ve got the capacity to deliver [that]. Obviously, if It can be done more swiftly than that, then that’s a bonus.
‘Phased transition’ out of lockdown likely from March
Raab continued by saying that, subject to all going well, the government would be able to think about a slow exit from the national lockdown in March, probably in a manner quite similar to the previous one:
DR: If we succeed in hitting [our] targets… we can start to think about the phased transition out of the national lockdown. I think it’s fair to say it won’t be a ‘big bang’… It will be phased possibly back through the tiered approach that we had before.
Government support should ‘be looked at in the round’
The government faces an opposition day debate tomorrow on the support being offered to people in a difficult financial state during the pandemic. Labour’s aim is to force the government to maintain the £20 increase to Universal Credit and Working Tax Credit, which was implemented last March. Raab said that the debate was primarily a political one, and that any changes would wait until the Chancellor’s next budget:
DR: We always said this would be a temporary measure… You have a March budget coming up… The government’s measures [should] be looked at in the round, rather than dripped out one by one, just because there’s a debate that’s been scheduled by the Labour party.
The UK should not enter trade negotiations with China
The interview turned to China’s treatment of the Uighur Muslims in the Xinjiang province in the north west of the country. Over the last few years, scholars and human rights groups have accused China of forcing Uighurs into living in re-education camps, conducting slave labour and making women undergo sterilisation. A vote in the Commons tomorrow will determine whether courts could be given the power to declare such abuses as ‘genocide’, and such a ruling would stop the UK from negotiating a free trade deal with any country found guilty. Although Raab was sceptical of handing these decisions to the courts, he backed the principle of walking away from a trade deal in protest:
DR: As the son of a refugee from the Holocaust, I couldn’t be more moved, and I support the spirit of what is being proposed… Frankly we shouldn’t be engaged in free trade negotiations with countries abusing human rights well below the level of genocide.
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratfliffe should be released immediately
Raab also spoke to Sophy Ridge, who questioned him about the case of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, the woman who was imprisoned in Iran on espionage charges and has reportedly been living in austere conditions for the majority of her sentence. Both she and the government have repeatedly denied the charges made against her:
DR: I’ve been focused… particularly intensely since the summer in speaking to foreign minister [Mohammad] Zarif, and pushing as hard as we can to get the immediate release… of Nazanin and all our dual nationals… I do not want her inside this arbitrary detention… a day longer than is possible.
Simon Stevens – There is a new Covid patient every 30 seconds
Marr went on to speak to Sir Simon Stevens, the chief executive of NHS England, about the current state of the health service. Stevens told him that the NHS had never been in a more precarious position in its history thanks to the emergence of the new variant of the virus:
SS: Staggeringly, every 30 seconds across England, another patient is being admitted to hospital with coronavirus… We’re seeing that not just in London and the south east… but that is spreading to other parts of the country as well – the east of England, the midlands and the north west.
A quarter of hospital cases are under 55
Marr asked Stevens about whether, assuming vaccination targets are met, he foresaw restrictions being lifted sooner rather than later. Stevens preferred to err on the side of caution:
SS: This is going to be a vaccination campaign that is going to take weeks and some months… It’s worth remembering that a quarter of patients being hospitalised for Covid right now are aged under 55… This is going to be a progressive improvement as we get more coronavirus vaccination supply.
I ‘absolutely’ support 24/7 vaccinations
The government has said that it will pilot vaccination centres working around the clock. Marr asked Stevens for his take on this proposal:
SS: Nobody in the health service needs persuading of the urgency and importance of getting vaccines delivered… The health service itself is a 24/7 service… So absolutely, we will do that at the point that we have got enough supply that it makes sense.
James Comey – ‘Lies work’
Ridge’s main highlight of the day was an interview with the former Director of the FBI James Comey, who was famously fired by Donald Trump during the department’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Unsurprisingly, there was little love lost between Comey and his former boss, and he did not hold back from a series of stinging criticisms:
JC: The greatest fear of the founders of the United States was that a demagogue would take the presidency and use the power of lies. And lies work… Donald Trump aimed not just to lie to people, but really to destroy the notion that truth exists.
‘I was sickened’ by attack on US Capitol
Comey also condemned the invasion of the US Capitol building by Trump supporting protestors, as well as making clear his disbelief that such scenes could have happened in the first place:
JC: I… was sickened by what I was watching… The failure to defend the hill just mystifies and angers me… and we need to know why at all levels… I’m worried, because there are armed, disturbed people who believe their country is being taken from them.
Trump should be impeached and barred from office
Despite Trump’s remaining days in the White House being numbered, Comey said that he supported the moves to impeach the sitting president, and that Congress should go even further. However, he also said that he didn’t believe in prosecuting Trump for any of his antics during his time in office:
JC: I think there has to be historic sanction for this behaviour… I am actually of the view that the country would be better off if we didn’t give him the platform that a prosecution would for the next three years… Ideally I’d like to see him convicted by our Senate and barred from holding office ever again.
Jonathan Reynolds – £500 one off payment ‘a terrible policy’
Ridge spoke to the Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary Jonathan Reynolds. The Chancellor Rishi Sunak has proposed a £500 one off payment to replace the aforementioned £20 a week increase in universal credit. Reynolds put Labour’s case for rejecting this:
JR: That is quite frankly, a terrible policy… The reason a one off payment is a bad policy is, whilst we’re talking about 6 million families being affected, those families will change throughout the year. Some will go back into work, some will come out… so a one off payment – a snapshot – completely fails to support those people.
Ed Davey – Political parties should be able to leaflet during lockdown
And finally, Sir Ed Davey, the leader of the Liberal Democrats has defended his party’s approach to getting itself heard during the lockdown, and accused the other political parties of doing the same thing:
ED: The guidance says there is an exemption for volunteer organisations. We’ve taken legal advice over that… We’re taking all the sorts of precautions that Amazon takes, that Royal Mail takes… We’ve got leaflets from Conservative activists [and] Labour activists… And I believe that as long as you’re helping the local community… you should be doing [that].
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