Brexit 

Express
REMAINERS have been brutally torn apart after coming under furious attack over their hypocrisy on the UK’s free trade deal and also being accused of being hellbent on making Brexit fail.
International Trade Secretary Liz Truss has held talks with her Australian counterpart as the two global powerhouses edge closer to a lucrative post-Brexit free trade deal. Ministers met on Thursday to iron out key differences, with Environment Secretary George Eustice and Cabinet Office minister Michael Gove fiercely opposed to a zero tariff, zero quotas agreement that is being demanded by Australia. Remainers have strongly warned such a deal would undermine UK farmers undercut by a wave of meat imports from Australia that could flood the market.
Writing for The Daily Telegraph, Brexiteer and former MEP Daniel Hannan said: “Something became painfully clear this week. The opposition to Britain’s global trade deals is not driven by concern for hill farmers, or fears for the Union, or any economic calculations whatever.
“It is driven, rather, by Europhile nostalgia; by the desire, perhaps unconscious, for Brexit to fail so that its opponents might be proved right after all. 

Immigration 

Mail
EU citizens could be charged a fee to visit the UK as part of a new scheme to tighten Britain’s border checks on countries which previously had freedom of movement.
Priti Patel will on Monday unveil details of a system of US-style electronic checks which will allow security services to screen all travellers heading to the UK before they have even boarded a plane. 
It will also make it easier to ban high-risk foreign criminals from entering and leaving the country.
Those coming to the UK without a visa or immigration status will be required to apply for the US-style electronic travel authorisations (ETA) and their details will be automatically checked against watch lists and criminal databases.
Those who have previously committed crimes will have their applications reviewed to decide if they should be let in. 
MailOnline have now been told that the Home Office is considering charging a passenger fee to cover the cost of the new border bureaucracy. 
It is believed the charge could be around £9, equivalent to the US’ ESTA scheme which costs $14.
According to The Independent, there is evidence from other countries to suggest the fee would not stop people from wanting to travel to the UK. 
Some 30million ETA applications are expected to be processed each year, The Telegraph reported. 

Guardian
Priti Patel has unveiled a US-style digital visa system that she claimed would help the government to count numbers of people entering and leaving the UK accurately for the first time.
People coming to the UK without a visa or immigration status would in the future need to apply for an electronic travel authorisation (ETA), the home secretary said, which automatically determines the eligibility of visitors in advance. The Home Office anticipates about 30 million ETA applications each year.
The proposals to “digitise the border” are to be officially launched on Monday as part of Patel’s widely derided plans to change the UK’s asylum and immigration system. Critics have called her plans to deport asylum seekers back to other European countries incoherent and inhumane.
The digital system is being introduced after recent evidence suggesting that long-held estimates of migration data were significantly wrong.
It was widely accepted that 3 million Europeans lived in the UK and would apply to the government’s EU settlement scheme. By the end of last month, however, more than 5.4 million applications to the scheme had been received, with 4.9 million granted settled status. 

Independent
Priti Patel will on Monday promise “wholesale reform” of the UK immigration system, which she says is “broken”.
In a keynote speech, the home secretary will confirm plans for a new “digital border” that will require all visitors to Britain to fill out more forms and possibly pay extra fees.
She will claim that the new US-style Electronic Travel Authorisation will make the border more secure by automatically checking for criminals from other countries and allowing more accurate statistics.
The home secretary, who was last week pictured observing immigration enforcement officers at work, will also flesh out plans to deny refugee status to any asylum seekers who have passed through a safe country before reaching the UK.
The idea, included in the Queen’s Speech, was condemned by the United Nations refugee agency and by charities, who say it breaches Britain’s historic obligations. 

Independent
The Home Office is considering charging EU citizens and other travellers a fee to visit the UK under a new scheme that would further tighten restrictions on countries with whom Britain until recently had free movement.
Priti Patel, the home secretary, is set to announce a new US-style digital visa system on Monday that she says will help the government keep closer track of the number of people entering and exiting the country.
The new Electronic Travel Authorisation (ETA) would be required for all visitors without a visa or immigration status travelling to Britain – around 30 million people a year.
The scheme is modelled on the American Electronic System for Travel Authorization or ESTA.
Officials confirmed to The Independent that the government was considering charging a passenger fee to cover the cost of the new border bureaucracy. 

Lockdown lift 

Telegraph
Boris Johnson is set to signal this week that Britain is on track to lift all remaining lockdown restrictions on June 21, as ministers step up discussions on the return of ordering drinks at the bar.
In the coming days, the Prime Minister will give the public an update on the latest data around the Indian variant of Covid, including case numbers and hospitalisations.
He will set out what the Government knows so far about the variant and where gaps in understanding remain before indicating what it means for confidence in the roadmap continuing as planned.
New data from Public Health England (PHE) shows there have been at least 2,889 cases of the Indian variant recorded in England from Feb 1 to May 18. Of those, 104 resulted in a visit to a hospital emergency department, 31 required an overnight hospital admission and six resulted in a death.
Mr Johnson will not offer concrete confirmation of whether he will proceed with step four of the roadmap on June 21 until a week beforehand on June 14, but is expected to be optimistic. 

Guardian
The prospects for ending all coronavirus lockdown restrictions in England on 21 June are “looking good” as long as people are careful, said Jenny Harries, chief executive of the UK Health Security Agency, while other scientists said the latest variant could spread widely even with high vaccination coverage and the public were urged to get second shots.
Harries was speaking as the government revealed that more than a million people had downloaded the NHS app, which now enables people to prove their vaccination status if they want to travel – suggesting many are hoping for a foreign holiday soon. More than 22.6 million people in the UK have had two doses of a coronavirus vaccine.
Harries was upbeat on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show, but said people still needed to take precautions for the time being, particularly as new variants of coronavirus continue to circulate.
Scientists are anxious about the low efficacy of one dose of the Covid vaccines against the so-called India variant, B.1.617.2. Late on Saturday evening, a paper from Public Health England revealed that vaccine efficacy after one dose drops from 50% against the Kent variant B.1.1.7 to 33% against the India variant.  

Times
Coronavirus restrictions are almost certain to be lifted next month with signs that the growth in the Indian variant may be levelling off, according to a health expert.
Jenny Harries, chief executive of the UK Health Security Agency, said yesterday that she was “increasingly confident” that the vaccines would work well against the variant.
Public Health England has estimated that the strain may already account for most cases across the country but that two doses of vaccine offer similar levels of protection against it as against the Kent variant. A single dose appears, however, to offer less protection against catching it than the Kent strain. 

Scotland 

Express
THE SNP’s National Women’s Convenor has come under fire after making derogatory remarks about the United Kingdom.
Cllr Rhiannon Spear, who also chairs Glasgow City Council’s education committee claimed Scotland “hates the UK” after their performance in the Eurovision Song Contest. James Newman, the British hopeful for the contest, was the only contestant to score zero points from the jury vote and from the public vote, coming bottom on the leaderboard.
The competition, which was held in Rotterdam, Netherlands, after the show was cancelled in 2020, was won by Italy with rock band Maneskin’s Zitti E Buoni.
Some 7.4 million people tuned in to watch the competition on BBC One, giving the channel a 48.5 percent share of the audience.
Responding to the vote, the Glasgow City Councillor wrote on Twitter: “It’s ok Europe we hate the United Kingdom too. Love, Scotland.”
The Greater Pollok councillor later added: “The UK has a billionaire Chancellor who won’t give NHS staff a fair pay rise during a global pandemic.” 

Express
NICOLA Sturgeon could be forced to place Glasgow into level 4 restrictions as cases of the coronavirus pandemic continue to soar.
According to the latest figures by Public Health Scotland, Glasgow’s seven-day average case rate has increased to 133.3 cases per 100,000 population. This is based on people who were tested between May 14 and 20.
It comes amid concern about the new Indian covid variant, which is believed to be driving an outbreak in the south side. 

Covid dogs 

Sun
SNIFFER dogs can detect Covid more quickly and accurately than rapid tests, a bombshell new British study has found.
Pooches’ super-sensitive noses can smell even tiny traces of the virus in people with no symptoms, with 94 per cent accuracy.
Trained dogs could soon be used to screen passengers at airports to stop dangerous new mutations like the Indian variant from coming into the country.
They could also be used the entrance to football stadiums, pubs, cinemas and other crowded venues to help ditch masks and social distancing.
Researcher Prof Steve Lindsay, from Durham University, told The Sun: “These results are fantastic and very exciting.
“At the start of the pandemic we didn’t even know if Covid had a smell, so we decided to investigate. 

BBC News
Sniffer dogs could contribute to efforts to prevent the spread of Covid as society reopens, according to scientists.
As part of a trial, dogs were trained to recognise a distinctive odour produced by people with the virus, but undetectable to the human nose.
This could come in useful for screening at airports or mass events.
But the dogs’ findings would have to be confirmed by lab testing, the researcher said.
Although the dogs correctly picked up 88% of coronavirus cases, they also incorrectly flagged 14% of people as having the virus when no Covid was present.
Dogs can have up to 100,000 times the smelling ability of humans and have long been used to sniff out drugs and explosives.
Recent research has shown dogs – particularly breeds like spaniels and retrievers – can detect the unique scents of diseases including cancer, Parkinson’s and malaria. 

Times
Sniffer dogs could detect Covid-19 infections among airport arrivals more efficiently than lateral flow tests, a study suggests.
Researchers have shown that people with the virus have a distinctive odour, even when they do not have symptoms. Six dogs were trained to detect this smell by the charity Medical Detection Dogs.
The best performer — a labrador called Tala — was able to identify positive samples with 94 per cent accuracy, while the lowest performing dog scored 82 per cent. By contrast, one widely used lateral flow test is estimated to pick up about 83 per cent of individuals with viral loads high enough to cause onward transmission. 

Mail
Sniffer dogs are more effective than rapid tests at detecting cases of Covid-19 and could soon be deployed at airports, according to a major British study.
Researchers found coronavirus has a ‘distinctive odour’ that means specially-trained medical detection dogs can identify infected people, even those without symptoms.
Astonishingly, the dogs are able to detect up to 94 per cent per cent of cases – making them significantly more accurate than rapid lateral flow tests.
The authors said their findings had ‘exceeded all expectations’ and that dogs could be used at workplaces, theatres and stadiums to help Britain get back to normal.
The scientists, from the University of Durham and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), are currently in discussions with the Department of Health and the World Health Organisation about deploying dogs at airports.
They said two dogs could screen 300 passengers coming off a plane for Covid-19 in just 30 minutes. People identified as positive by the dogs would then receive a PCR test to confirm the results. 

Cancer 

Telegraph
England is at risk of “replacing the Covid crisis with a cancer crisis”, with more than 300,000 people missing urgent checks since the start of the pandemic, experts have warned.
Official statistics show that, in the 12 months ending in March, 304,555 fewer patients were given an urgent referral to hospital by their GP because of suspected cancer.
The number referred for breast cancer checks alone dropped by more than 20,000 in 2020/21, the analysis by Cancer Research UK showed.
Overall, around 38,800 fewer patients started treatment for cancer – a drop of 12 per cent, according to the data, which covers England.
In some cases, treatment was put on hold to allow hospitals to cope with an influx of Covid patients and to protect cancer patients from virus infection. 
But experts warned that many of the “missing” patients would be those who were never referred for checks by their GP after struggling to access appointments or had kept away for fear of adding to pressures on the NHS. 

Sham marriages 

Mail
Measures to bar those suspected of heading to the UK for sham marriages will be announced by Priti Patel today.
The new crackdown will see visas refused in cases where intelligence points towards bogus weddings, the Mail can disclose.
Under a new Home Office plan to be published today, immigration officers will be given fresh powers to turn away travellers at the border if they suspect their involvement in a sham marriage.
In the most recent data – from 2018 – registrars reported 2,868 suspected bogus unions. This was up from 561 in 2009.
Justyna Sobieraj, 40, was told she would be sent back to Poland earlier this year for her role in organising sham weddings in Southampton and Winchester.
The move will be unveiled in a Home Office policy statement as Miss Patel delivers a major speech on immigration.
She will say later today: ‘The immigration system is broken, but this country isn’t. We can’t fix the system overnight, but we will fix it.
‘We have to make sure the system reflects the values and wishes of the vast majority of Britons of all colours and creeds. They simply want an approach to immigration that is fair but firm.’ 

Education 

Times
Boris Johnson was visibly shaken by the briefing about the impact of the pandemic on children’s education. At a meeting in Downing Street last month he was warned that tens of thousands of pupils will move from primary to secondary school this autumn unable to read and that many students who are months behind in their learning will struggle to catch up.
The prime minister has built his premiership on a promise to “level up” the disadvantaged parts of the country but Sir Kevan Collins, the government’s education recovery commissioner, told him that school closures had reversed ten years of progress in closing the attainment gap between richer and poorer pupils. 

Telegraph
Top A-Level students could miss out on offers from universities because of fears over grade inflation, experts have warned.
It is understood that universities are offering fewer places than usual during the current admissions process because just as many top grades will be awarded this year as they were in 2020.
Institutions are trying to avoid a repeat of the chaos that ensued last summer after an algorithm used to calculate A-Level results saw two-fifths of all grades in England lowered from predictions made by teachers.
All A-Level students were eventually awarded their predicted grades in a major about-turn by Gavin Williamson, the education secretary, which meant that thousands more were able to take up places at university.
Last year the Government set up a range of gap year schemes for some of the students who were forced to defer their place as a result of the exams fiasco. 

Times
Parents are against plans to increase the school day to help pupils bounce back from the pandemic.
Sixty per cent oppose extending hours, while 30 per cent agree, according to YouGov polling for The Times. However, there is backing for radical reform of education, just as The Times Education Commission — a year-long project to examine the future of education — is launched.
Lengthening the school day has repeatedly been identified by Sir Kevan Collins, the government’s education recovery commissioner, as a way of making up for lost learning.  

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