The Times - UK (2022-01-26)

4 Wednesday January 26 2022 | the times

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Some sunshine, although gathering
clouds will bring rain in the north
and west. Full forecast, page 55

THE WEATHER

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prejudice to the police investigation if some details are made public. Sources said Gray’s report would not include details of those who had given evidence to her or of specific allegations. These will be held back in a “confiden- tial annex”. Johnson will only see the parts of the report put into the public domain. Yesterday the prime minister told MPs he welcomed the Met decision to investigate because it would “help to give the public the clarity it needs and help to draw a line under matters”. He was aware of Dick’s announcement before a cabinet meeting but did not tell ministers because he did not want to “pre-empt” police, his spokesman said. Yesterday senior ministers were notable by their silence, though Jacob Rees- Mogg, the Commons leader, said he was “honoured” to serve under Johnson. Sir Robert Syms, the Conservative MP for Poole and a former whip who is considering a letter of no confidence, said: “It is going to drag on for some months. Most of us want to just move on and get back to normal politics. We can’t do that with [Johnson] in place.” Sir Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, said that things were “as bad as it gets for the prime minister, for the Conservative Party and for the country”. No 10’s “culture” problems all stem from Johnson, Daniel Finkelstein, page 25 We feel like fools for following the rules, Alice Thomson, page 27 Police investigation adds pressure on the PM, leading article, page 29

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TODAY’S EDITION

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Victim’s family

praise driver

The family of a mother
of two stabbed to
death by her stalker in
a street in Maida Vale,
west London, on
Monday have praised a
passing driver for
hitting and killing the
knifeman with his car.
The motorist is the
subject of a murder
investigation. Page 7

Cricketing chief in racism row The chairman of Middlesex cricket club has been accused of using stereotypes after he told MPs that black people preferred football and Asians were more interested in education. Mike O’Farrell was being asked about racism in cricket. Page 11

Covid cases on rise in schools Coronavirus cases in English schools have doubled in a fortnight, with one in 20 pupils absent on January 20 owing to the pandemic, official data shows. The surge appears to have brought an end to the country’s trend of falling infections. Page 14

New blow to England squad The England rugby player Joe Marler has tested positive for the coronavirus and is the latest player to withdraw from the Six Nations training squad. England begin their campaign against Scotland at Murrayfield a week on Saturday. Page 66

European drug

trade warning

Drug traffickers are
rendering the efforts of
European customs
officers almost useless
via infiltration,
blackmail, bribery and
threats of violence, the
head of Belgian
customs has said,
despite record cocaine
seizures in the country
last year. Page 30

Microsoft beats expectations The shift to home- working fuelled the growth of Microsoft’s cloud computing division and helped the tech giant to beat expectations in the latest quarter. Revenue and profit increased by a fifth but shares still fell amid stock market turmoil. Page 35

COMMENT

The unvaccinated are probably the least

understood group in British society THUNDERER, PAGE 26

COMMENT 25 LETTERS 28 LEADING ARTICLES 29

WORLD 30 BUSINESS 35 REGISTER 51

SPORT 56 CROSSWORD 66 TV & RADIO TIMES

DAB RADIO l ONLINE l SMART SPEAKER l APP

To day’s highlights

8.30am 12pm

2pm

8.30pm

10pm

Liz Truss, foreign secretary, below PMQs Unpacked: Matt Chorley and Tim Shipman pause the action in the House of Commons The designer Osman Yousefzada on his memoir The Go-Between, a coming-of-age story set in Birmingham in the 1980s and 1990s Marilyn Agrelo on her documentary Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street Carole Walker’s MPs’ Panel with Kevin Hollinrake and Andrew Gwynne

for an enhanced check needed to work in places such as hospitals and schools. A senior policing figure said: “If Sue Gray believes he was at a function which she fears has broken Covid rules, they will have to interview him. In the event he is a suspect, he has to be given a chance to present his defence, and under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act a formal interview like that must be done under caution.” Concern last week in No 10 that Gray’s report would be more damaging than expected were realised when Dame Cressida Dick, the Metropolitan Police commissioner, announced the inquiry. She said evidence from Gray met the threshold for the “most serious and flagrant type of breach” of the rules that would merit a retrospective investigation. Dick suggested there was evidence that those involved “knew, or ought to have known that what they were doing was an offence”. She said that her officers would investigate “without fear or favour”. Gray is understood to have discussed publication of the report with police after handing over her evidence. The Met believes its release is the preroga- tive of the Cabinet Office, but it has been made clear to Gray’s team that the force would prefer not to see certain details in the public domain relating to specific events it is investigating. There are understood to be concerns about potential

Tory pressure to delay April’s rise in national insurance has intensified as official figures showed government finances were in a healthier state than expected. Borrowing was £13 billion lower than forecast, according to the Office for National Statistics. MPs and right- leaning think tanks said this “growth dividend” was almost exactly the same as the sum to be raised by the new health and social care levy and should be used to cancel the looming tax rise. But Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, pointed to surging interest payments to insist the government could not afford to relax, while other experts urged him to use the money for more targeted relief for the rising cost of living. Tory backbenchers are increasingly nervous about the 1.25 percentage point rise to both employees’ and em- ployers’ national insurance due in April to fund dealing with the NHS backlog and capping the cost of social care. They fear voters will punish the party as a tax increase coincides with a big rise in energy bills and rising inflation. Downing Street yesterday said that

Borrowing windfall increases

pressure to delay April tax rise

Chris Smyth Whitehall Editor there were “no plans” for a delay, but Boris Johnson is being heavily lobbied on the issue by MPs whom he is trying to convince to back his beleaguered leadership. Yesterday Office for National Statis- tics figures showed the government borrowed £16.8 billion in December, the fourth highest total for the month since records began. Public sector net borrowing was estimated at £146.8 billion between April and December last year, the second highest on record after

However, the sum was £12.9 bil-
lion less than predicted by the Office for
Budget Responsibility (OBR), thanks to
higher than expected tax receipts.
John Redwood, the former cabinet
minister, said that the “massive surge in
tax revenues this year means govern-
ment borrowing [was] way below bud-
get forecasts”, asking “why do they
think they need a tax rise?”
Julian Jessop of the Institute of Eco-
nomic Affairs, a free market think tank,
said: “The UK government borrowed
nearly £13 billion less than the OBR had
forecast. This provides the ‘fiscal room’
to ditch the hike in national insurance
contributions planned for April, which
would have raised about £12 billion.”

He said while the government would need to raise funds to pay for health and social care long term, it was at present “entirely credible to use the growth dividend to pay these costs, rather than adding even more to the tax burden”. Greg Smith, Conservative MP for Buckingham, said that “we need to U-turn on the national insurance increase” and argued for cutting spending elsewhere to pay for it. “A fiscal conservative like me will struggle with the concept of just borrowing our way out of it,” he said. “It’s unambiguous that dealing with the NHS backlog and doing something on social care are absolutely priorities, but that means something else has got to give.” James Smith of the Resolution Foun- dation think tank said that the £13 billion “fiscal room for manoeuvre makes it inevitable that the chancellor will set out a plan to deal with the cost-of-living crunch. A targeted package to limit the rise in energy bills is the top priority.” Sunak pointed to interest payments of £8.1 billion in December, three times the figure for the same month a year earlier as a result of rises in inflation, with total interest payments £21 billion higher last year than the year before.

continued from page 1 Johnson faces police interview

shows the number of pupils taking design technology GCSEs has fallen by more than a quarter since 2018. Dyson said: “Children are creative, they love building and making things but as they get closer to GCSEs and A-levels all that is squashed out of them.” Robert Halfon, Tory chairman of the Commons education committee, said: “We need to say goodbye to Mr Chips and Tom Brown’s Schooldays and hello to James Dyson. The curriculum needs to better prepare children for the world of work, with much more vocational and technical offerings all the way through the school system. A-levels should be replaced with an inter- national baccalaureate and we should stop the narrowing of education at 16.

This should be a fundamental part of levelling up, if it’s to mean anything.” Reports show that the spending gap between state and private schools has doubled in the past decade. Tens of thousands of pupils are thought to have become persistently absent from school. Others are struggling to catch up from school closures during the pandemic. While head teachers are under pressure to oversee the education recovery, many of those in industry believe it is a chance to transform what is taught in schools and how this is assessed. Dame Sharon White, who chairs the John Lewis Partnership, was one of several business leaders to tell the commission that she could no longer rely on qualifi- cations as a measure of candidates. She said: “The system has become even more narrow, limited and box-ticking.”

John Caudwell, the Phones4U founder, said that many graduates he had employed were not ready for work. Branson called for less emphasis on exams and more on employment skills. The Commercial Education Trust, set up by the London Chamber of Com- merce and Industry, polled a represent- ative sample of 500 small, medium and large firms. Almost three quarters said that profitability was suffering because recruits lacked basic workplace skills. Separate analysis by the consultancy Oxera, conducted for the commission, found there would be a £45 billion boost to the economy in the long term if social mobility in Britain reached the western European average. Findings show that education system must change, leading article, page 29 Learning for the future, pullout

continued from page 1 Education Commission

U

ntil yesterday Boris Johnson had a clear strategy to deal with partygate: another apology, followed by a shake-up of his Downing Street team and a parliamentary operation to shore up backbench support (Oliver Wright and Chris Smyth write). The prime minister was aware that, depending on Sue Gray’s report, he might still face a confidence vote, and critics and defenders were primed to parse her phrasing to make their case. However, the belief was that without evidence of criminality Johnson could ride out the storm, and the announcement that Gray has found such evidence — now being investigated by the Met — shatters those calculations. Downing Street faces months of stasis while the police comb emails and phone messages and interview witnesses, possibly under caution. Johnson’s already deeply demoralised team will have to remain in place — distracted, worried about their futures and incapable of focusing on the other very significant problems facing the government.

Analysis

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The Times - UK (2022-01-26)

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