Bailouts for energy-intensive firms affected by soaring prices will depend on factors such as whether they recently paid out big bonuses, a senior minister has said today.
Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor, is now considering a rescue plan which would see massive loans handed out to help struggling businesses get through the coming winter. It comes after Kwasi Kwarteng, the Business Secretary, made a formal bid for support amid tensions between the two departments.
In an effort to end the briefing war, Downing Street put its weight behind the Business Secretary yesterday, paving the way for loans and other support to be granted in the coming days.
This morning Steve Barclay, the Cabinet Office minister, told Times Radio there would be conditions set for any firms getting bailouts, although the expectation was that they would go to their shareholders and owners first.
"It is right from a taxpayer point of view, as we are mindful of this huge amount of support, to look at that in terms of what is value for money," he said.
"We need to look at the businesses themselves - have they recently taken dividends, have they recently paid big bonuses?" he asked. "We need to understand details rather than just have a knee-jerk response."
？？Follow the latest updates below.
The chair of the Energy Intensive User Group has said the Treasury must be "quick and swift" in determining what support is deployed to help firms navigate soaring prices.
Richard Leese told BBC Radio 4's Today programme the group had submitted three proposals to Kwasi Kwarteng, the Business Secretary, last week: a winter cost containment plan, immediate action on the network cost and a plan for preventing damage to equipment should supply be disrupted.
"The Business Secretary listened to all of the industries on Friday, he listened to our concerns, he took on board the proposals we made," Dr Leese said. "His officials worked up solutions over the weekend and I understand they were presented to Treasury yesterday.
"It's absolutely crucial that the speed of the Treasury assessment is quick and swift. The Business Secretary's taken swift action to look at the measures for this winter. We need an equally swift response from the Treasury."
He noted that it was "very unusual" for industry figures to make media interventions, adding: "We can take from that that there is an urgency - we need this preventative action to stop the issue escalating further."
Two people were injured when a train crashed through buffers at a station.
The incident involved a London Overground service at Enfield Town station, north London, during rush hour on Tuesday morning
A London Ambulance Service spokeswoman said: "We sent a number of resources to the scene: one ambulance crew, an emergency planning officer, a clinical team manager, two incident response officers, medics in cars, and our hazardous area response team. Two people were assessed at the scene for minor injuries, but they were not taken to hospital."
Local MP Feryal Clark has said she is "shocked" by the news, as she praised emergency services for their quick response.
The head of the UK Steel has warned that a promised Government support package for energy-intensive industries may be no more than a "flimsy sticking plaster".
Gareth Stace, the director general of the trade body, said he was yet to see details of the plan put forward by Kwasi Kwarteng, the Business Secretary, and "therefore I can't comment on whether it is enough, whether it will fix the problem or not".
"The key test in this proposal is, 'are we now going to be on an equal footing with steelmakers in Germany?'," he told BBC News. "If this package results in us still paying 80 per cent more for energy than our competitors in continental Europe then really this will really be a flimsy sticking plaster on what is really a major crisis that we are going through that the moment."
He said the Prime Minister needed to take "swift and firm action" to resolve the crisis following the huge surge in gas prices or risk the levelling-up agenda ending in "tatters".
The row between the Treasury and the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Beis) might be dying down in public - but in private it seems things are still simmering.
The ComHome blog has received another hostile briefing from one Treasury source, who says that Kwasi Kwarteng, the Business Secretary, "saunters in without having done his paperwork".
The suggestion is, of course, that the clash is one of style with Rishi Sunak having the reputation of a Chancellor very much on top of his brief.
The extraordinary public spat over the weekend has drawn the attention of Cabinet ministers, one of whom told the site: "I can’t remember a spokesman doing that before by means of a formal briefing.
"If you’re a Cabinet Minister and Number 10 slaps you down, that’s one thing. But Number 11 doing so is another."
The delay in imposing a second lockdown last autumn was not a mistake, a minister has said, insisting there were "difficult judgments to be made" over coronavirus lockdowns.
Asked if timing of the autumn 2020 lockdown was an error, Steve Barclay, the Cabinet Office minister, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "No I don't, because I think there were difficult judgments to be made, we followed the scientific advice throughout.
"We took action to protect our NHS, we got a vaccine deployed in record time, but I don't shy away from the fact that there will be lessons to learn," he added.
"That is why we're going to have an inquiry to get to the heart of these issues and in particular to do so for the families that have suffered such devastating loss as a result of what has been a global and unprecedented pandemic."
A minister has highlighted Boris Johnson's prior apology for "the suffering the country has experienced", as he continued to avoid making one himself.
Steve Barclay, the Cabinet Office minister, has been asked multiple times this morning if he would say sorry to grieving families in the wake of a damning report published today.
He told BBC Radio 4's Today: "Well, look - as the Prime Minister said in May, he was sorry for the suffering the country has experienced, we take responsibility for everything that has happened, and that is why we've committed to an inquiry in order to get the answers to what has happened and to explain to those families the basis of the decisions that have been taken."
Mr Barclay stressed that with "hindsight" it was now clear that "there was much more willingness for the country to endure [lockdowns] than was originally envisaged."
See 8:05am and 8:37am for more
The World Health Organisation's special envoy for Covid-19 has said it is not "relevant to apportion blame at this stage", following a damning report into the Government's handling of the pandemic.
Dr David Nabarro told Sky News it was useful to have a "really cold, hard look at what happened", saying every country should carry out "this kind of analysis and would then have quite a dense learning moment".
But he added: "We don't think it's relevant to apportion blame at this stage, we do think it's right to learn... I want to stress this virus has not gone away, it's continuing to mutate, it's capable probably of causing all sorts of future problems.
"So why not let's all learn what the experiences of the last two years, and make sure we've got them on board for the years to come? And then we will actually be better able to resist it - it's not going to just go away if we wish it away."
Liz Truss has for the first time invited guests to a country seat traditionally reserved for the Foreign Secretary, in the wake of a row with Dominic Raab over who gets use of the property.
Ms Truss shared a photo on Monday of herself and her counterparts from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania walking in the grounds of Chevening House, Kent.
Mr Raab, who was demoted from Foreign Secretary to Justice Secretary at the last reshuffle but gained a new role as Deputy Prime Minister, was said to have objected to losing the use of the house and insisted he was allowed to visit.
In a further blow to his standing in Whitehall, it was also revealed on Monday that he has not been asked to head the Government while the Prime Minister is on holiday.
Read more here.
The former head of the vaccine taskforce has said there needs to be more scientists in Government to deal with future crises.
Kate Bingham, a biochemist who has won plaudits for her work spearheading the UK's vaccine programme, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme there was a "lack of scientific and industrial expertise" in Whitehall.
"We need to have ministers who are competent in this areas, as well as in the Civil Service, because it's no good doing what they did with us every time," she said. "You can't just bring in a taskforce and say 'right get on with it".
"You need embedded skills within Government at all levels that have those relationships with industry as well as industrial expertise to be able to make decisions."
The UK "should have been more rigorous in the regime around care homes", one of the MPs behind a damning new report into the Government's handling of the pandemic has said.
Greg Clark, the former minister who chairs the science and technology committee, told BBC Breakfast that the "painfully slow" development of Test and Trce had affected the rate of infection in care homes.
He added: "But even with the limited testing capacity that we had, we should have been more rigorous in the regime around care homes - that's to say when people did go into care homes from hospitals, we should have been tougher in requiring that they went into isolation facilities.
"Germany did that and imposed that and they had a better record initially on care homes. Other countries in East Asia also did that ... so there are lessons that we need to learn now, to put in place, so that this can't happen again."
Acknowledging that "there's not a single person that wasn't motivated and working all hours to try to make the right decisions", he said there was a need "to confront ourselves with some difficult truths".
The failure to implement an earlier lockdown was a "consensus decision" taken by ministers and scientists, Greg Clark has said.
The Conservative MP, whose science and technology committee co-wrote a damning report into the handling of the pandemic, told BBC Breakfast: "It wasn't that the Government went against the scientific advice, or that there was some great row about it. Everyone agreed that this was the right thing to do.
"We now know that it wasn't - that is using the benefit of hindsight, but it's important to do so."
He echoed comments made by colleague Jeremy Hunt that there was " a widespread assumption that people wouldn't obey lockdown measures for a very long period of time", which led to authorities waiting to impose them "until almost the last possible moment, so that they could have the longest effect".
Steve Barclay has said his "heart goes out" to those who have lost a loved one during the pandemic - as he once again resisted apologising.
The Cabinet Office minister has been defending the actions taken by the Government last spring, after a new report found that Britain did not lock down sooner because ministers failed to challenge poor scientific advice.
Mr Barclay said: "I recognise the devastation to the families concerned, but we took logical decisions at the time, based on the information we had."
Asked for an apology to those who lost relatives during the pandemic, he told LBC Radio: "Well I recognise it's devastating and my heart goes out to any family, any of your listeners where they lost a loved one."
See 8:05am for more
The UK did not believe that long-term lockdowns and other measures required to stop the spread of Covid were "possible in a democracy", Jeremy Hunt has said.
The former health secretary and chairman of the health committee told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that China's use of a lockdown early on was not as a viable solution in the UK because "China is a very different society".
He said: "We thought some solutions available to them would not be possible in a democracy - but there are some very vibrant East Asian democracies like Taiwan and Korea...
"We didn't think there was anything more we could have done but... had we been more open to approaches taken in other countries, we could have adopted what turned out to be the best approach more quickly."
The same was true of Test and Trace, he added, noting that by the time it was rolled out in the UK the rate of infections were too high.
"That made it very difficult - we were always running to catch up."
The UK's response to the pandemic was "a bit like a football game with two very different halves", Jeremy Hunt has said.
The health committee chairman told BBC Radio 4's Today programme there were "very serious errors" in the first half, notably the decision to lockdown too late, but the second half was characterised by treatments and vaccines which saved thousands of lives "around the world".
He added: "It many cases it was the same people who were responsible for both sets of decisions."
Asked if the Government adopted a herd immunity response, Mr Hunt said the report did not find any "desire for the whole population to be infected, but there was a fatalism that it was likely that in the end that was the only way we would stop the virus".
Jeremy Hunt has admitted he was part of the "groupthink" that focused too much on flu and failed to adequately plan for a pandemic.
The former health secretary told ITV's Good Morning Britain the UK should have locked down earlier and "the Prime Minister is of course ultimately responsible, but some of the advice that he got was also wrong".
Mr Hunt added: "There was a groupthink that the way you tackle a pandemic should be similar to a flu pandemic, I was part of that groupthink too when I was health secretary.
"In fact, you know, during that period, an American university said we were the second-best prepared country in the world. We know that clearly wasn't the case."
He said the countries "that have direct experience of Sars and Mers were the ones who responded best in the first half the pandemic".
The Northern Ireland protocol "harms the Good Friday Agreement itself", the leader of the DUP has said.
Sir Jeffrey Donaldson told BBC Radio 4's Today programme the peace deal set out that "there should be no change to constitutional status of Northern Ireland without consent of its people - there is an international agreement that has been breached and it is harmful to political stability in Northern Ireland because it upsets the very difficult constitutional balances that is at the heat of the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement".
He added: "We are not prepared to implement something that is harmful to the political process in Northern Ireland and harmful to Northern Ireland's place within the UK in a way that contravenes and does not require the consent of the people of Northern Ireland."
Jeremy Hunt has said the Government should have better interrogated the advice they were given by scientists at the start of the pandemic.
A report published jointly today by the health & social care and science & technology committees said the UK's initial response was one of the worst ever public health failure, exacerbated by a delay in introducing the first lockdown.
The Government's approach - backed by its scientists - had been to try to manage the situation and achieve herd immunity by infection, rather than impose an earlier lockdown.
"We know that some of that scientific advice was wrong, but also that politicians should have challenged that advice,"Mr Hunt told Sky News.
"You can't just say 'we're following the science' - you have to dig down and ask why scientists are saying what they're saying. That challenge should have happened earlier."
The Government "did take decisions to move quickly", a minister has insisted amid a damning report from MPs on the Covid-19 pandemic response.
Steve Barclay, the Cabinet Office minister, told Sky News: "The decisions were taken on the evidence and the scientific advice at the time, they were taken to protect the NHS. The understanding of issues such as asymptomatic infection and how that spread the disease, we now know far more about that than we did in 2020 at the start of the pandemic.
"I think a question for the inquiry will be what information did the Government have on something that was unprecedented? Were the decisions informed by the science at the time and do we now know different things about the pandemic to what we knew in February in 2020?
"And of course we've learnt a huge amount, but we did take decisions to move quickly, that is why the vaccine was deployed at pace, that was a success that the report recognises."
A minister has said the European Court of Justice and trade issues are equally important to resolving issues with the Northern Ireland protocol.
Steve Barclay, the Cabinet Office minister, told Times Radio it was the best way to find a solution that endured.
"Both communities need to be viewing the protocol as sustainable in the long term," he said.
"Both sides are committed to the Good Friday Agreement. To ensure that is protected and we need a protocol that is sustainable in the long term."
A minister has refused to apologise 11 times, after a report by two parliamentary committees found serious errors at the start of the pandemic led to thousands more deaths.
Steve Barclay, the Cabinet Office minister, told Sky News that the Government was willing to "learn lessons" from the public inquiry it has commissioned, which will not start until next year.
But asked repeatedly to apologise, he either ignored the question or said "no".
"We followed the scientific advice, we protected the NHS," he said.
"We have always said with something so unprecedented there will be lessons to learn, we have committed to a public inquiry, and that will be an opportunity to learn lessons."
He stressed throughout that the Government made "logical decisions based on the advice we received".
Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel held talks over Ukraine with Vladimir Putin on Monday night, as it emerged the EU could buy emergency gas supplies from Russia in a bid to drive down rocketing energy prices.
Vladimir Chishov, the Kremlin’s ambassador to the EU, had earlier suggested Europe could get more gas if it stopped treating Russia as “an adversary”.
Tory Treasury minister Lord Agnew of Oulton told parliament on Monday that spiralling energy costs were nothing to do with supply shortages, but were due to a "geopolitical move" by Russia to put pressure on Europe to clear the North Stream 2 pipeline.
Just days after insisting there were no talks about possible bailouts for firms affected by the energy crisis, the Treasury is now mulling a package of support to help them survive a winter of sky-high gas prices.
But with Lord Frost set to give a major speech on the Northern Ireland protocol this afternoon, and a critical report about the handling of the pandemic in its early days, that's not all the Government is grappling with today.
Here is today's front page.
Need help?
Visit our adblocking instructions page.