2 2GM Thursday August 6 2020 | the times
News
ness customers will hurt them at the
worst possible time.”
The UK’s new digital services tax is
aimed at sales and will be paid only by
companies with revenues from digital
activities of more than £500 million
globally and £25 million in the UK.
Amazon said: “Like many others, we
have encouraged the government to
pursue a global agreement on the taxa-
tion of the digital economy at OECD
level rather than unilateral taxes.”
A Treasury spokesman said: “We’ve
been clear the [digital tax] will be
removed once an appropriate global
solution is in place — and we continue
to work to reach that goal.”was unfair. “Higher fees would damage
us as a fast growth start-up and may
make us more inclined to just focus on
our direct-to-consumer sales if the
numbers didn’t add up,” she said.
Darren Jones, chairman of the busi-
ness, energy and industrial strategy
select committee, accused Amazon of
dodging the tax. “Local high street re-
tailers don’t get to opt out of VAT or
business rates. Amazon shouldn’t be
able to opt out of fair taxes either.”
Mike Cherry, national chairman of
the Federation of Small Businesses,
added: “The tax is aimed at the profits of
multinationals with large revenues.
Passing the tax on to their small busi-COMMENT 23
THUNDERER 24
WORLD 28MARKETS 42-
REGISTER 49
WEATHER 57Global
confirmed casesUK confirmed
casesPlease note, some sections of The Times are available only in the United Kingdom and Ireland
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CORONAVIRUS SUMMARY
SPORT 58
CROSSWORD 68
TV & RADIO TIMESSimplified app tested
A scaled-back version of the
coronavirus app will be launched
this month after the government
accepted that it was not accurate
enough to be used for contact
tracing. An app will be tested that
tells people about infection levels
in their area and allows them to
use personal information to
calculate a risk score. The
technology was originally
developed as an automated form
of contact tracing but it is likely to
begin by informing people about
their personal exposure to
coronavirus. Page 8‘Let pupils wear masks’
Ministers have been urged by
Labour and Anne Longfield, the
children’s commissioner for
England, to drop opposition to
pupils wearing face coverings to
ensure that schools can reopen next
month. Boris Johnson has said
that the return of all pupils is a
“national priority” but Neil
Ferguson of Imperial College
London warned that this could
restart the epidemic without curbs
on other activities. Nick Gibb, the
schools minister, said that
teaching would resume with strict
distancing measures. Page 918,354,342 696,307,184 46,Britons remain at home
British workers are more reluctant
to return to the office than their
European counterparts, a study by
Morgan Stanley has found. About
34 per cent of Britons are back at
their desks compared with roughly
75 per cent of Germans, Italians
and Spanish. France has the highest
return rate of the big economies,
with 83 per cent of office staff now
back, according to the research.
Nearly 50 per cent of British office
staff are working five days a week
from home and 25 per cent have
returned part time. Page 10Work from hotel room
The hotel group Accor is offering
people who are tired of
interruptions while working from
home but reluctant or unable to
travel to their office a room from
9am to 6pm that provides a
“premium working experience”,
with the opportunity to conduct
calls in private. The chain said that
in a survey of 2,000 British office
staff almost a quarter reported
that distractions at home made
them less productive. Page 33Scots ‘pub crawl ban’
A ban on “pub crawls” is being
considered in Scotland after a
serious coronavirus outbreak,
linked to bars, led to Aberdeen
being put into lockdown. Nicola
Sturgeon, the first minister,
ordered the city’s pubs and
restaurants to close by 5pm
yesterday after a cluster of 54
cases was identified. There are
fears of community transmission
taking hold after it emerged that
the outbreak, at one pub, was
linked to 28 bars, cafés, golf clubs
and a junior football club. Page 10Divorce appeals on way
Family courts are expected to face
applications from divorced parties
seeking to change agreements
reached before the pandemic. To
overturn an order there must be
new events that invalidate the
basis on which it was made. Emma
Gill, of the law firm Vardags, said:
“While Covid on the face of it...
fulfils that criteria, it’s not unique or
individual to one couple.” She
predicted that courts were likely to
be unsympathetic. Law, page 53Global deathsUK deathsCOMMENT
Ministers had no excuse to gamble money on
contracts for firms unqualified to produce PPE
LEADING ARTICLE, PAGE 27Privacy bills at US Open
Organisers of the US Open have
told competitors that they must
pay for private security to monitor
their movements if they use
private homes made available
during the tennis tournament. The
competition will run in a biosecure
bubble from August 31 to
September 13. Officials will be able
to check entry and exit records
from the homes. Two hotels have
also been designated for players
and their staff. Page 59China patients still weak
Most Covid-19 patients treated in
intensive care in Wuhan, China,
are experiencing debilitating lung
damage three months after their
discharge, according to a study by
Peng Zhiyong, the ICU director of
Zhongnan Hospital, in the city. A
separate study in Beijing found
that several patients over 65 who
needed critical care were still on
supplementary oxygen and many
had not recovered their sense of
smell or taste. Page 12the government. Last year Amazon
said that it paid £220 million in direct
taxes in the UK, only 2 per cent of its
£10.9 billion of UK revenues. In con-
trast Tesco, Britain’s biggest retailer,
which generated sales of £37 billion in
the UK in the most recent financial
year, paid £1.8 billion, or 4.9 per cent.
Amanda Thomson, founder of
Thomson & Scott, which sells alcohol-
free and sparkling wine on Amazon,
said making sellers pay higher fees was
not the intention of the tax and that
“punishing small companies in a crisis”who sat on the government’s planning
task force, said local representatives
would be more involved at a strategic
level instead of ruling on applications.
“This sense that ‘housing is done to us’
was the most prevalent and passionate
response we had from the public,” he
said. “It’s a failed democratic process
that has lost credibility.”
The Royal Town Planning Institute
said the reforms were a huge change
and would require the government to
work closely with planners and would
also “demand serious resourcing”.
David Cameron tried to force coun-
cils to provide more land for new homes
but only half in England have set home-
building targets with allocated land. Mr
Johnson has a larger majority, bolstered
by seats in the north and Midlands. He
will hope that commitments to protect
areas of green belt, outstanding natural
beauty and “rich heritage” will draw
some of the opposition when MPs vote
on the system. It is unclear when the
legislation will be introduced.
At least as controversial will be
changes to taxes that developers must
pay to fund local infrastructure and
affordable housing. The community in-
frastructure levy, which Mr Jenrick
helped the Tory donor Richard Des-
mond to avoid on a London develop-
ment last year, is to be abolished along
with so-called Section 106 agreements.
In 2018-19 the number of affordable
homes completed in England was
57,485, an increase of 22 per cent on the
previous year. Nearly half were funded
by Section 106 agreements. They will be
replaced by a single infrastructure levy.
Last night the Town and Country
Planning Association criticised the
plans as disruptive and rushed. It said
that 90 per cent of applications were
being approved but there were up to a
million unbuilt permissions.Q&A
Will this make it easier
for developers to build
new homes in my area?
It depends on the
category your area falls
into. The government
plans a zoning system
to split land into three
types: growth, renewal,
and preservation.
If homes, schools,
shops and offices meet
local design standards,
they can be given a new
legal permission in
principle to build on
land in the first two
categories, which would
fast-track them through
the planning process.
The aim is to make it
easier and less costly
for small-to-medium-
sized builders to gain
planning permission.
Critics say planning
approvals do not get in
the way of homes being
built. In the past decade,
government figures
show that building has
started on only half of
homes with approval in
England. The Home
Builders Federation says
so-called “land-banking”
is a myth.Does it mean building
on Green Belt land?
No, this will still be
restricted and the new
reforms will focus onbuilding on brownfield
land, with policy still
determined at local
authority level. It will
come under the third
category of land that
calls for preservation
not development, along
with Areas of
Outstanding Natural
Beauty and those
judged to have “rich
heritage”.Will builders still have
to contribute to the
local infrastructure?
They will, but the old
rules will be replaced
with a national levy that
is based on a proportion
of the value of the
development above a
set threshold. The
government expects it
to raise more revenue
than previously to
spend on new roads,
upgraded playgrounds
or affordable housing.How will building
standards be kept up?
Some say that blocking
local councils from
rejecting individual
developments will result
in low-quality housing.
Previous liberations
from planning rules,
such as office-to-
residential conversions,
have been unpopular in
many London
boroughs, and resulted
in homes no bigger
than sheds, says a
government-sponsoredreport. Robert Jenrick,
the housing secretary,
wants to “cut red tape,
but not standards”, by
creating a fast-track
system for “beautiful”
buildings and coming
up with a national
design template that
can be tweaked locally.
Every area will also
have a local plan under
the new proposals,
developed and agreed
in 30 months rather
than the current
average of seven years.
The new standards
would stipulate that all
new roads are tree-lined
and all new homes are
carbon neutral by 2050.Will this benefit
first-time buyers?
If the new system leads
to more housebuilding,
this would increase the
supply for those trying
to get on the property
ladder. The government
also announced its First
Homes scheme, which
would allow first-time
buyers, key workers and
people who live or work
in the local area to
purchase a new home
at 30 per cent less than
its market value.
This discount would
be locked into the
property so it could be
passed on to the next
buyer. The government
has not said how many
homes will be provided
under the scheme.continued from page 1
Amazon tax disputecontinued from page 1
Planning rules easedPupils are facing the “life sentence” of
receiving incorrect GCSE and A-level
grades with “no effective right of ap-
peal” under the results system imposed
during the coronavirus pandemic, a
former headmaster has warned.
Most teenagers in England will be
given grades calculated using a statisti-
cal model next week after the exam-
ination season was interrupted by the
lockdown.
Ofqual, the exam regulator for Eng-
land, has said that appeals will be al-
lowed only on technical grounds and
not if a student simply believes that
they have been given an unfair grade.
Martin Stephen, the former high
master of St Paul’s School in London,
likened the system to “imposing a life
sentence on children, with no effective
right of appeal”. Exam results day inPupils stuck with wrong exam
grades and ‘no right of appeal’
Greg Wilford Scotland earlier this week was labelled
a “shambles” after nearly 125,000 pre-
dicted grades were downgraded by the
Scottish Qualifications Authority.
Writing in The Daily Telegraph, Dr
Stephen said that the situation in Scot-
land was “likely to be dwarfed by the up-
roar that will follow the publication of
GCSE and A-level results for England”.
He described the new system as
“deeply flawed”, adding that it works
fairly only for schools “whose perform-
ance has been static for three years”.
The statistical models used in Eng-
land and Scotland take into account
factors including data on a school’s his-
toric grades.
Ian Power, the general secretary of
the Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’
Conference, warned that exam boards
could face legal challenges unless the
rules were changed. He said that ap-
peals were the “biggest concern” aboutthis year’s process for organisation,
which represents schools including
Eton, Winchester and Harrow.
The Conservative MP Robert Halfon
MP, chairman of the education select
committee, said that parents would
need a lawyer to be able to navigate the
appeals process, which he claimed “on-
ly serves the well-heeled”. “It has got to
change – it has to be a level playing field
for all student,” he added.
Kate Green, the shadow education
secretary, urged ministers to set out
what they will do to help aggrieved stu-
dents navigate the appeals process.
Ofqual began a consultation in June
that proposed some additional grounds
for students to challenge their results. A
response is due this week.
The regulator has said that it will
publish information on how appeals
will operate this summer.
Coronavirus reports, pages 8-