Brexit
Mail
Britain and the EU are set to clash over the cost of Brexit after their estimates of how much the UK’s ‘divorce bill’ will be were set £3.5billion apart.
The Treasury confirmed this afternoon that it estimates the UK should have to pay Brussels £37.3billion to sever its ties to the bloc.
But last week the EU’s own estimate set the fee at £40.8billion, warning that it viewed that amount as ‘final’.
It came as Brexit minister Lord Frost rejected calls to withhold payment of the bill over a continuing dispute about Northern Ireland‘s trading arrangements.
He said threats made had ‘overwhelmingly’ come from the EU, but he told the Lords he did not feel it would be right to hold the financial legal obligation ‘in hoc’ to the issue.
Confirming the UK government’s estimate of the divorce bill in a written statement to Parliament, Chief Secretary to the Treasury Steve Barclay said: ‘HM Treasury estimate that the current value of the financial settlement is £37.3bn.
‘This remains within the Government’s previously published reasonable central range, adjusted to take into account the UK’s 31 January 2020 exit date.’
He added that the UK has already paid 3.74 billion euros (£3.19billion).
Last week the EU’s annual accounts revealed it has set the estimated bill at 47.5 billion euros (£40.8 billion).
European Commission spokesman Balazs Ujvari said: ‘The report is final … and the calculations were made in line with the withdrawal agreement.
A methodology for calculating the sum was agreed during negotiations for the Withdrawal Agreement that paved the way for the UK’s departure, but an exact figure was not agreed.
The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) estimated it to be £37.1 billion in 2018.
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Express
SENIOR Brexiteers have warned the EU “the world is watching” how they treat the UK with the implementation of the Northern Ireland Protocol.
Conservative and DUP politicians lined up to criticise Brussels for its implementation of the Protocol in a House of Commons debate. Veteran eurosceptic and former Tory frontbencher Sir Bernard Jenkin led the MPs in criticising the European Commission.
Unionists have been left angered at bureaucracy and red tape introduced by the Northern Ireland Protocol.
They say the mechanism, introduced at the end of the EU transition period as part of the withdrawal agreement, is causing unacceptable friction in trade between Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
Brexit minister Lord Frost has warned the EU he will be forced to invoke Article 16 – a legal procedure to end the Protocol – unless Brussels shows more pragmatism in its implementation.
Warning Brussels not to play hardball, Sir Bernard told the Commons: “The world is watching how the EU is dealing with the United Kingdom.
“The UK will offer agreement on what the problems are and how they must be resolved.
“Together the EU and the UK can look for common ground about how to do so.
“Otherwise the rest of the world will see that the grounds for invoking Article 16 have already been met and action will have to be taken.”
Article 16 allows the UK or EU to take unilateral action to suspend the Protocol’s implementation if “serious economic, societal or environmental difficulties that are liable to persist, or to diversion of trade”.
Also speaking during the Commons debate, DUP leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson said the Protocol had been “socially disruptive, economically ruinous and politically disastrous for Northern Ireland”.
He told MPs: “The Protocol presents the greatest ever threat to the economic integrity of the United Kingdom.
Fisheries
Express
THREE French fishing vessels have been caught plundering UK fish stocks in waters designated as conservation areas, Greenpeace has revealed.
The environmental pressure group challenged two of the ships as part of Operation Witness, an ongoing mission to challenge ships operating in specially designated Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) around the UK coast. The French-flagged bottom trawlers, VF Atlas, which was operating in the Offshore Brighton MPA, and Glorieuse Immaculee, which was operating in the Offshore Overfalls and Bassurella Sandbank MPAs, were contacted by activists in Greenpeace’s ship, Sea Beaver, and agreed to stop.
Bottom trawling is a type of fishing whereby a massive net is dragged along the sea bed, which critics blame for significant damage to the underwater environment.
The crews of both ships claimed they were not aware of the existence of the MPAs.
Additionally, the Glorieuse Immaculee had been operating with its AIS satellite tracking off – something which poses a threat to other seafarers, and which is forbidden by maritime law.
‘Pingdemic’
Mail
A terrified 12-year-old girl hid behind her mother when police turned up at her home to check that she was self-isolating – afraid she was going to be arrested.
Officers then came to her home the next evening in what the family said was a riot van, prompting a ‘meltdown’ from the bewildered schoolgirl.
Charlotte Crook had been at home following the rules after a positive coronavirus test and her shocked mother Kathryn yesterday branded the police response ‘overkill’.
Throughout the pandemic, police have faced accusations of heavy-handedness in enforcing Covid restrictions.
It comes after business leaders warned the ‘pingdemic’ was causing chaos for families, firms and hospitals and demanded changes on the NHS Covid-19 app to avoid a ‘self-inflicted economic wound’.
NHS chiefs have also warned the system was making it ‘increasingly difficult’ to deliver routine care and said hospitals were now scrapping operations because so many workers were having to self isolate.
Nearly 900,000 alerts telling people to quarantine were issued in the first week of this month following contact with a coronavirus victim.
But rising numbers of people being forced into self-isolation has led unions to warn that factories across the country are on the ‘verge of shutting’ down.
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Technology
Express
BREXIT Britain can seize the initiative now it has freed itself from the shackles of the EU by adopting 10 pioneering policies to trigger an economic revolution, experts have said.
And the move has been backed by former Prime Minister Tony Blair, who said the time was right for the UK to embrace the transformative nature of technology. The new report, entitled The Way of the Future and published to coincide with the publication of the Government’s own Innovation Strategy, brings together leading experts from a wide range of fields who have outlined their proposals in ten groundbreaking essays.
Ideas range from championing innovation with a Victorian-style Great Exhibition to an overhaul of science funding to slash bureaucracy, and from investing in a world-leading centre for research into genomics to the recruitment of the most promising young scientific talent from across the world with the help of scholarships.
The collection is a joint project from The Entrepreneurs Network and the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change (TBI).
Mr Blair said: “The 21st century technology revolution is transformative, extraordinary in its consequences and impact and will and should dominate our thinking in the years to come
“No one doubts technology can also have negative effects. But the critical point is that for good or ill, it is changing the world.”
France
Express
EMMANUEL MACRON is facing the ultimate humiliation as French people turn on their leader, urging him to mimic Boris Johnson’s approach to coronavirus restrictions.
The French President this week announced sweeping measures to fight a rapid surge in new coronavirus infections. In doing so, Mr Macron went further than most other European nations as the highly contagious Delta variant fans a new wave of cases.
Some critics of Mr Macron’s plan – which will require shopping malls, cafes, bars and restaurants to check the health passes of all patrons from August – accuse him of trampling on freedoms and discriminating against those who do not want the Covid shot.
Les Patriotes leader, Florian Philippot, urged the public to take to the streets of Paris this weekend.
In an email to his followers, he wrote: “If Boris Johnson, British Prime Minister, had to announce the full return of freedoms to his country from July 19, it is partly because he was put under immense popular pressure.
“A few days ago, in fact, hundreds of thousands of Britons took to the streets in London to demand freedom. And it worked!
“The tyrannical measures announced by Emmanuel Macron on Monday evening, the apartheid policy that he brutally imposed on France, these anti-science measures, after 18 months already of an unnamed liberticidal madness, deserve a popular response at least as powerful as in the UK!
“In the minutes which followed his dictatorial speech, I decided with Les Patriotes to make our weekly meeting of Saturday July 17 a historic meeting.
“A historic parade for Liberty.
“This parade will leave this Saturday July 17 at 2:30 pm from the Place du Palais Royal in Paris, that is to say the seat of the Council of State and the Constitutional Council, and we will walk with strength, peace and righteousness to the ministry of health.
Social care
Mail
Boris Johnson is preparing to announce a cap on the amount people have to pay for their care as soon as next week.
Number 10 and the Treasury are said to be putting the final touches to a deal to ‘fix’ the social care crisis.
The Prime Minister is understood to be keen to publish reforms before the second anniversary of his entry into Downing Street on July 24, when he first promised to bring forward plans.
Last night it was claimed that Downing Street is considering introducing a new tax to pay for the reforms.
The Times reported that No 10 was ‘comfortable’ with imposing an additional levy on families.
However senior Tories fear it would break the party’s manifesto commitment not to raise income tax, National Insurance or VAT.
It could mean a separate ‘social care levy’ on income, or an added amount that only the over-40s would have to pay.
Caroline Abrahams of Age UK said: ‘If a credible package of social care refinancing and reform requires a tax rise, so be it, provided it’s fair.’
Following a speech yesterday, Mr Johnson said people would see his social care proposals ‘before too long’.
The reforms – designed to stop people being landed with sky-high care bills which force them to sell their homes – are believed to be based on those first put forward by Sir Andrew Dilnot just over a decade ago.
Sir Andrew proposes that there should be a lifetime cap on care costs set at £50,000 – after which the state would step in to pay.
A similar story can be read in the Times
Johnson has to be forcibly removed from office for all our sakes he is doing enormous damage to the UK I don’t understand why the conservative party are tolerating him I am old enough to remember Thatcher being ousted and she was more formidable than Johnson will ever be most recently Theresa May was sent packing
Test and trace, I would never have any so called app and change names and phone numbers when asked – Tony Blair is my favourite!
Exactly Mike ! No app……………….no ‘ping’.
Some years ago ( 1970’s ? ), I suggested this or similar..::–Here it comes …Stage 1 Inflation . Stage 2. Curbs on State Give Aways… Stage 3 Tax Rises.and consumer shortages Stage 4 Frenzied efforts to rebuild. Essentials shortages . Patchy teck shortages Stage 5. Fixed and hidden asset inflation, Stage 6. Fixed asset inflation. Land and fixed asset grabbing. Stage 7 State isolation, Tek currencies.Stages 5 to 8. Repeated Money printing to gain time Stage 9 State break up/Retrenchment/ Abandonement of periphal state coverages. Stage 10 Local or alternative money systems. Including power currencies. Stage 11. Local protectionism/Money/land/power/laws/… Stage 12 Blocs. Stage 13 Wars
All this of course can be halted by other factors Such as Superpowers, technology advances, Pandemics ( Real or administered ), Some sort of cobbled together super government., agreements etc. The other thing of course is the jockeying of powerful organisations un-connected. ukip?
It was fun then.