Politics

The Scottish government has announced that people hoping to form social bubbles over the Christmas holidays will be limited to a maximum of eight people, not including children. We spoke to the social psychologist Prof Stephen Reicher and asked him whether knowing that the restrictions will be loosened at Christmas will make people more likely…

We spoke to the Conservative MP David Simmonds – and began by asking if he thought the government needed to do better.

Dame Louise Casey led the scheme to arrange temporary accommodation for thousands of rough sleepers at the start of the pandemic. Now, with most of the country likely to face Covid restrictions for many more months, she says the government must “resurrect a sense of kindness and giving” to help people struggling in the “tough…

The government has said it remains committed to Conservative manifesto commitments not to raise income tax, VAT or National Insurance. It comes after the chancellor announced yesterday that he would jettison the party’s commitment to spend 0.7% of GDP on foreign aid. Today, the IFS warned that Rishi Sunak’s spending review is likely to result…

Prof Helen Stokes-Lampard is chair of the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges.

One area going into Tier 3 is Kent. Case rates there vary widely – Swale and Thanet have the two highest rates in the UK, whilst other areas are below average. But the government decided to put the whole county into the highest level of restrictions, ignoring pleas from MPs for more localised measures. So…

Both the health secretary and the prime minister praised Liverpool for getting its case rate down. The city entered lockdown under Tier 3, but will exit it in Tier 2. For most places in the north of England though, it was a different story. Tier 3 beckons for much of the region, including Greater Manchester.

Blink and you could miss the transition next week – from lockdown to the tier system. Just 700,000 in England will move back to the lowest tier of Covid alert. More than 40 percent of the population, many in the North and Midlands will be in the highest tier. Boris Johnson admitted that the new…

We’re joined by Treasury minister, John Glen, and the shadow business minister, Lucy Powell.

The chancellor has announced a change of policy that has led to criticism from former Conservative prime minister David Cameron and caused a junior minister to resign. 

Ministers had relied on a stockpile that proved inadequate when the crisis hit, and the system was overwhelmed by the scale of demand for these items. 

We took a closer look at the chilly economic figures put out by the spending watchdog

Cathy Newman got a few minutes with the chancellor,

The chancellor, Rishi Sunak, has spelled out the devastation inflicted on the economy by coronavirus.  

If it wasn’t already a struggle to get onto the housing ladder, things just got that much harder for people on furlough.