 haircuts and gyms on the 12th of April. Household gatherings from the 17th of May, and clubs open from the 21st of June. Ash, comrade, have you ever enjoyed a speech by Boris Johnson as much as the one he made to the House of Commons today? Well, the thing is that Boris Johnson's got a history of getting my hopes up before bringing them crashing down. So I swear to God, if I'm not in the club by June 22nd, Boris, it's on site. Obviously, yes, today is the big laying out of the path out of lockdown. Boris Johnson announced it in Parliament today at half free. We are going to cut live in a few moments to his press conference. He will re-announce what we already know. You probably already know that as well, but what we'll be watching for mainly is what the scientific advisors say and also how Boris Johnson fields questions which are given to him. I've introduced the show on a light heart. No, I'm not going to hide the fact that I'm very excited about barbers, gyms and clubs being open in my lifetime, hopefully. But, and we will be discussing many of the serious and controversial issues which have come to light today. Now, most of those involve schools because Boris Johnson has announced that all schools and all students will be back from the 8th of March. Now, that seems to be against the scientific advice. Chris Whitty seems to be quite unhappy about that. So, one of the things we should really be looking out for in this press conference is whether or not any of the media questioners can really put Chris Whitty under pressure on that particular issue. Can they get him to say, I support Boris Johnson saying that all students go back to school on the 8th of March? I think that's probably the most controversial issue that was announced today as well, potentially as Boris Johnson saying that zero COVID is just unachievable. We'll talk about that in a bit more detail later on as well. We're not just going to be talking about the route out of lockdown and this press conference tonight though, because later in the show, we have former Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell on and we're going to talk to him about the windfall tax he is proposing to cancel a lot of personal debt so we can have a more equitable way out of the lockdown as the economy starts to bounce back so that it's something that can benefit ordinary people as well as just those who were lucky enough to save over the lockdown. And obviously, I'll be asking him what he makes of Kirsten Armour as well. It would be remiss not to do so and in the middle of those two massive stories, and we're going to talk about the other big story of the weekend, which is Matt Hancock being found to have broken the law. That was because he did not publish in due course or in the timeframe that is determined by law, details of the contracts that were signed during the pandemic. Now, his excuse, we were in a big rush, but why that doesn't necessarily stand up is because so many of those contracts went to his mates, more of that later on. Before we cut to the Downing Street briefing, as soon as they come out, you know the score we want you to share, the show link, get more people watching this stream, tweet on the hashtag Tiskey Sour, put your super chats in the comments. I suppose actually I'm going to have more opportunity to be looking at your comments today because we're going to be, you know, the press conference is going to be taking the lead for a while. I can sit back for probably the first 20 minutes or so of this show. We'll be giving you some commentary throughout, but obviously we'll be focusing on listening to what they have to say. And especially as I say, especially what the scientific advisors have to say. I think Ash was having some slight problems with her camera. They might be resolved. I'm not quite sure. Are they resolved? Yes? Insular. Amazing. What are you most looking out for in this press conference, Ash? For me, what I'm most looking out for is to what extent do they think that the vaccine rollout is going to be able to keep ahead of an increase in the R rate. So I think there's already a kind of consensus that with schools reopening en masse on the 8th of March that it might even take the R rate above one again. So what's their expectation of keeping ahead of that really with the vaccine only? You know, I'm with you in this kind of middle ground between, you know, a slow and cautious unlocking and perhaps even looking towards zero COVID. I'm not fully convinced either way. But what worries me is about this government is that the vaccine is very much seen as the silver bullet and the only thing in its arsenal. I'm not hearing very much about how they're going to make schools safer than they did last time. What they're doing about ventilation, what they're doing about space, what they're doing about social distancing. Similarly, when you're thinking about reopening hospitality, the mantra of COVID secure became kind of an element of a false sense of security. So how is this unlocking going to be safer than the last one? I don't think that the only alternative to unlocking is staying locked down. I think that there's a range of means at the government's disposal. But what worries me is that you don't hear so much about that. All you hear about is the vaccine. Yeah, I mean, in the focus on dates, we kind of miss that there are lots of still, you know, unanswered questions which haven't been answered for a whole year, which is why not just pay people to self-isolate? Because whatever date we open schools, whatever date and we open nightclubs, we're going to need a test and trace and isolate system that works. And that means making sure that people can survive, can financially support themselves when they're not going into work. I think we're going to bring on the screen any moment now. But apparently no, Johnson, yet. We know who you're all waiting for, the Prime Minister, Ash. You look like you're about to say something. I did, because I had a thought. And it wasn't just what you're going to wear to the club, babes. The thought was that one question that rarely gets asked of the government, it didn't get asked last time, and I don't hear it being asked now, is what are you going to do with a low rate of transmission of the virus? Because then you can think about that almost as money in your pocket and you get to spend it. What are you going to do with it? How are you going to utilize that time to set up your test, trace, and isolate system and improve it so that it actually tests, traces, and isolates rather than just being a set of numbers to put up on a graph and then you don't really act on it whatsoever. How are you going to locally contain outbreaks at a very early stage? I don't think that these are things which the government gets asked very much. And that's kind of worrying that within all the optimism in euphoria, and I am optimistic, I am euphoric. I do really want to socialize again and have something resembling a normal life. But these difficult questions of how you achieve and conserve that, you don't necessarily hear Boris Johnson being put under pressure like that. Absolutely. Although I have to say, I mean, he is sounding more sensible than he has for the past 12 months. I mean, the messaging that came with this new round was that they were prioritizing education and socializing, you know, human contact over business, which is what we want to hear. I mean, as I say, there's going to be many questions around the announcement as it has planned. It might not be as cautious as he is making out, especially when it comes to schools, sending them all back at exactly the same time. But what we've been complaining about on the Varah Media for the past 10 months throughout this pandemic is that again and again and again, the government have prioritized those situations where money is exchanged. They've prioritized people going to pubs and restaurants, but not really hanging out in person with each other if money is not exchanged. And it feels like after 10 months, that message kind of has started to be absorbed a little bit. There is no way out to help out this time. You sort of wonder what that means for Rishi Sunak and whether internally, we know that there's some changing of the guard going on around Downing Street, whether it's Rishi Sunak who is perhaps the most lockdown reluctant member of the cabinet sort of being isolated a bit. It's like, all right, mate, you were the one saying get back in the office and paying everyone to get into Nando's. That didn't work out so well. So you sort of wonder if within the cabinet he's had to sort of keep it pinned a bit more than he would have last year. Yeah, I think that moment that there was a period during this pandemic where labor basically decided we need to start attacking Rishi Sunak because everyone hates Boris Johnson anyway. It's going to be soon our keys, our new target. And I think that's completely changed. I think that Boris Johnson now, I mean, his popularity is rising again. He's now the favoured Prime Minister over Kierstama. That's because of the vaccine rollout. And I think probably one of the reasons why the tone has changed from the government is because they do realise how badly they fucked up beforehand. And it is worth noting, they fucked up like three times beforehand. So yes, they may have learned from their mistakes, but this is the fourth time and the fact that they haven't learnt until now. And again, this is very, very qualified. There are still loads and loads and loads of flaws in this plan as it is currently announced, involving self-isolation, involving schools. But it's better than what we've got for them over the past 10 months. And if they'd just learnt this 10 months ago when we were saying it, when we were saying just prioritise those basic needs that people have. It shouldn't be about either everyone's going to be alone or depressed at home or we're going to have hundreds of thousands of people in hospital, there is a middle ground. But what you have to do is ignore industry lobbies. And it seems like with this timetable, they are not paying as much attention to the industry lobbies as they have before. I'll be listening to on talk radio, not talk radio, talk radio as a genre where people are calling up saying, I own a pub, I've put in so many measures to make this COVID secure. I've put up my perspex. I'm doing constant deep cleans. Why won't they let me open? The reason they're not allowed to open at this point is because perspex and deep cleans completely meaningless. It's an airborne virus. The government won't admit that they completely fucked it up last summer by telling everyone, oh, you get it from surfaces. But policy has changed because even if the government won't admit it, I think the scientists have finally hammered into Boris Johnson's fairly fixed goal that this is an airborne virus. We can't just say so long as you're wiping surfaces every hour, it's fine to have old people and young people and hundreds of people from different households in the same room. I mean, I think two things must have shifted as thinking a bit. One is obviously the number of deaths and hospitalizations we've experienced in this country, part of which you can explain through the emergence of the Kent variant, but it's also simply because we had schools that opened in London before we ended up going from tier two to tier four. And then you also had the kind of emotional shock of people's Christmas plans being canceled. So I think that that was quite a wake-up call of all of those things coalescing at once. And also with the disruption of Christmas, that's something which their cohort of voters are gonna get really pissed off about. For all that talk of Jeremy Corbyn and Diane Abbott canceling Christmas to appease the Muslims or whatever it was, it was the most sort of authoritarian nationalist government this country has had in decades. So it's something that's a bit ironic there. So I think that you can only get away with that kind of mismanagement for so long, where it really is impacting on the lives of your voters who tend to be a bit more well-off, homeowners, retired, they're not so financially precarious as younger people are in this country. But they were getting cheesed off because they were like, hang on, mate, I bought the turkey now. I mean, the other thing is the vaccine changes lots, obviously. Now we have a route out. It's the vaccine which is gonna save us from all of this. But in terms of the political calculations, it also changes something because I think the arguments of the Rishi Sunax, which was to say, we can't have too much state intervention. We can't have too many restrictions because what if this undermines liberal capitalism forever? Because they were like, this is gonna be around forever. We've got to assert a new normal, which isn't socialism. And now there's a vaccine. I think Boris Johnson was like, well, maybe we can just do some support for four months and then it will be the end of it. It won't necessarily transform society forever. Let's go to some comments. I think the press conference has been put back. Oh no, he's coming out now. So we'll go to some comments in a moment. Let's see what he has to say. Thank you very much for joining us. Our extraordinary NHS has now succeeded in vaccinating more than 17.7 million people across the UK. And nearly a year after this pandemic began, this unparalleled national effort has decisively shifted the odds in our favor. So that we no longer have to rely simply on lockdowns and restricting our behavior and putting our lives on hold. But with every day that goes by, this program of vaccination is creating a shield around the entire population, which means that we're now traveling on a one-way road to freedom. And we can begin safely to restart our lives and do it with confidence. And I want to be frank about exactly what that means and the trade-offs involved. The vaccines reduce the danger of COVID, they save lives, and they keep people out of hospital. But no vaccine against any disease has ever been 100% effective. So whenever we ease the lockdown, whether it's today or in six or nine months, we've got to be realistic and accept that there will be more infections, more hospitalizations and therefore, sadly, more deaths, just as there are every year with flu. Even if we sustained the lockdown indefinitely, which would itself cost lives and do immeasurable harm to our children, we would not be able to eradicate this disease. And that's why it's right gradually to replace the protection afforded by the lockdown with the protection of the vaccines. And our approach is to move with the utmost care and advancing in four steps, each with a minimum of five weeks apart, so we can properly judge the impact of each relaxation before we move on. And you can see the details of all of this on gov.uk. We'll be led at every stage by data, not dates, and we will apply for tests. The pace of the vaccination program, the effectiveness of the vaccines, the pressure on the NHS, and the risks of any new variants of COVID. And therefore, as we look at the data today, I can confirm that two weeks from today, Monday the 8th of March, we will begin step one. And schools and colleges across England will reopen and teaching classrooms can start again. All the evidence shows that schools are safe and the risk posed to children by COVID is vanishingly small. But to offer even greater reassurance, we're introducing twice weekly testing of secondary school and college pupils and asking them to wear face coverings for the rest of this term. Students on practical courses can return to the university, but all others will need to continue learning online and will review the situation before the end of the Easter holidays. We will allow breakfast and after-school clubs to restart and among other changes on March the 8th, you'll be able to have a coffee on a bench or a picnic in a park with one person outside your household. And because we know how stressful this time has been and how people yearn to see friends and family, if only fleetingly, we will now go further. And on the 29th of March, you can meet more of your friends and family outside, including in gardens, either as two households or subject to the rule of six. And then we'll go on to step two, which is no earlier than the 12th of April. And this is a big moment because shops will return and reopen hairdressers, nail salons will reopen, pubs and restaurants will all be able to serve customers outside, precisely because we know that outside, the risk of transmission is lower. And then five weeks after that, no earlier than May the 17th, we'll go to step three and open all our hospitality sector to service indoors, pubs, bars, restaurants, along with hotels and cinemas, and subject to capacity limits. We will also open sports stadia, concert halls and theaters. And finally, provided we continue to pass the four tests, then from the 21st of June, we will go to step four and say goodbye to most remaining restrictions, resuming large scale events like business conferences and football matches, lifting the limits on weddings and reopening nightclubs. All of these steps will apply in England and the government will continue to do whatever it takes to protect jobs and livelihoods across our whole United Kingdom for the duration of the pandemic. And I know there are some who would like to accelerate at the timetable. And I know of course there are others who would like to be more cautious and stay in the slow lane. And I understand both points of view and I sympathize because levels of infection are still high and we must strike a very careful balance and always accept that we've got to be humble in the face of nature. But also we must accept that we cannot persist indefinitely with restrictions that have separated families and loved ones for too long, threatening the livelihoods of millions kept pupils out of school. It's thanks to the rollout of these vaccinations, many of them pioneered in this country that the balance of that judgment is now changing in our favor. And thanks to the vaccinations that there is light ahead, leading us to a spring and a summer which I think will be seasons of hope, looking and feeling incomparably better for us all and from which we will not go back. Thank you very much. I'm going to ask Chris to do the slide. Thank you Prime Minister. First slide please. This slide, which is familiar I think to anyone who's watched these press conferences shows the number of people testing positive for COVID-19 in the UK. And as you can see, there are essentially two things to take away from this. The first of which is that the number testing positive has fallen and is continuing to fall. But the second is that the rates are still very high at over 11,000 cases on a seven day average rolling basis. Next slide please. Similarly, when we look at number of people in hospital with COVID in the UK, again, you can see there is a significant fall that is continuing, but the rates are still high and they're only slightly below the height of the first peak we had last year. So definitely things are heading in the right way but remain at a high level. Next slide please. And then if we look at the number of people who have sadly died with following a positive test result for COVID-19, these are also falling and the most recent seven day average is 480 deaths a day. So still high but falling and falling steadily at this point in time. Next slide please. Now all of the things we've seen so far largely are done or probably almost entirely are done due to the activities of the general public in the UK and all four nations in the UK staying at home and following the lockdown guidelines. But we have had this really extraordinary rollout of vaccination across all four nations of the UK and you can see in this graph that this line is continuing to go up steadily day on day. Next slide please. So I just wanted to talk a little bit about what we would expect the impact of this to be and the Prime Minister has also asked me to talk a bit about the results of three studies that were released today from England and from Scotland. So the first thing in this slide to say is that the great majority, well over 90%, near a 99% of those who sadly die of COVID are in the groups, the JCVI Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation Groups, one to nine. And they're in the dark blue and this is a study of people in hospitals in the UK. And the largest group of those, 86%, are people who in groups one to four. These are people who are over the age of 70 and at this stage we have vaccinated the great majority of people in those groups including in care and nursing homes who wish to be vaccinated, a very, very high proportion. So we anticipate that if the vaccines are effective, we would anticipate the death rate will now start to fall not just because of people staying home and obeying the lockdown guidance and instructions which people are to an extraordinary degree, but also because of the effects of vaccination because people have now had these vaccines were now on the middle bar, which is people in groups ages 50 to 69, already going very rapidly through those over the age of 65 and people who have significant health problems who are under 65, but who we want to accelerate the period by which they're vaccinated. So they too are being vaccinated early on. So this will lead to a significant further reduction in the risks of people dying. And this also includes a significant number of people who were then hospitalized, who were not in the first four groups. But there are people who get severe disease and are hospitalized under the age of 50. And it's important to understand that we must not leave them behind in vaccination because there are still severe cases in people who otherwise have no other health problems as well as people who got predictable health problems in hospitals across the UK under the age of 50. Next slide, please. So my final slide is just to make that point in a different way. And these are data looking at the proportion of people admitted to hospital with COVID-19 by age here in England. And what you can see is people over the age of 65, the great majority of whom have now been vaccinated make up 58% of those people, but people under 65 make up a very substantial 42%. So there's a lot of people who would, if they got COVID might go on to develop severe disease and go into hospital, still unvaccinated. And we have quite a way to go in all four nations of the UK but making very fast progress. Now, how effective are these vaccines? And that's a question which we said we think they're effective trials are very good to date. What we was released today, both in England and in Scotland were three studies which tried to address this problem. And this is what the prime minister asked me to try to lay out. The first of them is a study done, it called the Saren study that was done in people who are healthcare workers. So young adults under the age of 65. And what that showed is that at 21 days, there was a 72% reduction of the effectiveness of the vaccine, but the vaccine led to a 72% reduction in the number of people who developed an infection, even a mild infection at 21 days after just one dose of the vaccine. And this increased further to 86% if they had a second dose. So that's extremely good protection just from mild infection. Now, obviously you have to have mild infection to go on to get severe disease. And then the second study, which is an important additional piece of information from Public Health England, showed that you've got significant protection also in older people, including people over the age of 80. So over 55 or 55% protection just from getting mild disease at 35 days. But if people got an infection, there was a further reduction of around 50% in them having severe disease and therefore going into hospital. So if you put them together, you obviously won't get into hospital if you don't get disease at all. And then you have a further 50% reduction. So we are confident from these data that the effectiveness of this vaccine in older people in reducing hospitalizations is greater than 75%. The exact number will change as the data comes in, but this we are confident that this is going to be the case. And this is backed up by a third study that was released from Scotland. And that looked at both the Pfizer vaccine, which is the data I've shown from the UK so far, and the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine and the headline numbers they report. And to be clear, I think these will change a bit over time. But the headlines that they report is that the probability of the vaccines reducing your chance of going into hospital. So that's made up of reducing the risk of infection and then reducing the risk of severe disease, both of them together, was 85% for the Pfizer vaccine and over 90% for the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine. And that was remained, that vaccine effectiveness remained in those who were 80 years old. So this tells us three things. The first one is these vaccines, both the vaccines being used in the UK provide a very substantial level of protection from the first dose. And in fact, the great majority of the protection is from the first dose. So very important people get their vaccination. Secondly, the data suggests that that protection continues over a prolonged period beyond 21 days. So this is, I think, supportive of, it doesn't prove it's exactly what I'm going to do, but supportive of our delaying the second dose. But importantly, the third thing it shows is that we must make sure that those who've had a first vaccine go on to get their second vaccine. Final thing the Prime Minister asked me to talk about was the delay of five weeks between the different stages of this, between the different stages as they're rolled out the next phases of the roadmap that the Prime Minister announced to Parliament today. And the reason for that is that inevitably for each one of these steps, we are taking a risk which is an accepted risk. There is a risk to this and everybody in the country I'm sure understands this. And what we want to do is after each set of risks with a particular set of opening up, wait until we have data that tells us, has this done what we expected it to do? Have we actually ended up in a slightly worse place than we thought we would? Or have indeed we ended up in a slightly better place? But I think the big worry is, have things got slightly worse than we were expecting? And we cannot measure that in less than about four weeks because it takes that long for the effect to be seen and the data to come through and be analyzed. So that's the reason for the five week gap because it allows us to see whether it's had an effect and then to make a judgment as to whether that's material to making the next decision. That's the basis on which this is done. But I think I would like to restress what I said at the beginning on the first slide. There are still very significant numbers of people with infections every day in the UK. There are still a lot of people in hospital with this disease. This is not the end, but this is the point where we can have a steady risk-based data-driven opening up, but everybody must stick to the guidelines as they go through the different stages. Because if we don't do that, then we will get to a stage where the rates go up very high and you'll find there are people who are not protected by the vaccination. These are not 100% effective, as the Prime Minister said. Thank you very much. Thanks very much, Chris. Patrick, anything to add? No, I completely agree with that. And the caution of going every five weeks is very important, because we need to measure so that we're not flying blind from this. We need to know what the impact of the opening up steps are. Thanks very much. Let's go to David from Cardio. Vaccine rollout is going really well, but people will soon start to require their second dose of the vaccine. What is the government's plan for incorporating these second doses into the vaccine rollout? Will you need to cut back on the first doses being given, or will the vaccination program be expanded even further? And how? David, you're asking a very important question. We've got to make sure that we have the supply in place for everybody to get their second vaccination within 12 weeks, as well as giving every adult, as we said already, a vaccination by the end of July. And we do believe we have the supplies in place to keep up that rhythm and that timetable. And obviously we're looking the whole time to source more where we can from our suppliers, according to the contracts that we've already signed. But that's basically the plan. David, I hope that will do you. Let's go to Rachel from London. The W-R-H rollout is called on countries to ensure an equitable vaccine rollout. This is not only the fair thing to do, it's also safer so we can generally give the virus less opportunities to evolve and fewer strains develop. Will the UK commit to ensuring for an equitable vaccine rollout and distribution once, for instance, our top nine priority groups have been vaccinated? Yes, Rachel, it's very important that the UK will continue to support vaccine rollout across the whole world. That's why we've invested in the COVAX vaccination program. Forgive me, we're one of the biggest donors in the world to COVAX. And as you rightly say, there's no point in having a vaccination program that is simply confined to one country. It's a global pandemic. We need a global vaccination program. Anything to add, Chris? I want to follow up there about intellectual property rights. I'm sure if it doesn't get one. Well, exactly. There's no pressure to put on vaccine manufacturers and the rules in place for another four months. When you really hope to be able to say to the public, it's over. And Professor Whitty or Sir Patrick Bell, it's been acknowledged very openly today by the government that more deaths will come as a result of lifting restrictions. And I know you won't want to put specific numbers on that, but can you warn the public what kind of numbers they should be prepared for? Because even one of the optimistic suggestions is around 30,000 more deaths as a result of lifting the rules. And while the vaccine program has been remarkable, government documents today suggest 66% of people will be covered only about 2,000 of the population. If there's full uptake, what do you actually expect the uptake to be? Laura, this isn't the end today, but it's very clearly a roadmap that takes us to the end and takes us on a one-way journey. We very much hope if we can stick to it, if the data continues to support the decisions we take at the pace that we want to take them. So you ask when, whether you've got the key dates, April, the 12th, May the 17th, then June the 21st for everything and to be open again. And for things that we couldn't do last year, like nightclubs and all the rest of it, theaters to be back up and running again. But we will be guided by the data and by the progress that we make. And that's why it is important also to be cautious and to recognize that it's by, I think people would rather see a certainty about these dates as much certainty as we can give than haste. And that's a great offer. On the numbers, and I've been very careful never to put forward numbers if I can possibly avoid into the public domain because I just don't think it's helpful or in fact meaningful. But I think just thinking about it in relative terms, every year in the UK, as in every other country, you get substantial numbers of people dying from respiratory infections. Flu is the one everyone thinks about. An average year might be about 9,000 people a year. Bad years are significantly more than that. But you also have pneumonia, you had adenoviruses. There are a lot of other respiratory infections. And this I'm afraid for the foreseeable future, coronavirus is going to be added to that list of things that those who are vulnerable, even despite vaccination, can be at risk of. We vaccinate against flu, we vaccinate against pneumococcal pneumonia and still there are cases and there are deaths. And I think people need to see it in that way, not to see it separate from others, but to see it as this is something where the vaccination will take the rates right down, but they will not get rid of this and this is something we have to see for the long term. In my view, it was likely to be a problem in particular in the winter for the next few winters. Then let's see how we go. On the 66% thing, and this is made up in part because children are currently not being vaccinated. There's a live question about whether in the long run, vaccination of children would be something to offer, but there's a long way to go before that. We haven't got trials in children, we haven't got licensing children, we haven't got the modeling to suggest that's the right thing to do in children at this point. I think this is probably several steps away. At this point, the real priority is getting through all the adult groups. And I think what's been really cheering is we thought we were being quite ambitious in the uptake we would get on the vaccines, actually the uptake from almost every part of society so far has been incredibly high. And this is very good because it protects them, it protects the people immediately around them and in the long run, this will help protect society. So the extraordinary levels of uptake we're seeing over 90%, in some cases, well over 90%, I hope that is replicated as people are invited to vaccination, please do go. It protects you and it protects everyone around you. And then in terms of minimizing the number of deaths, it's about going slowly and it's about us all sticking with the rules. So when there's a chance to sort of do a bit more, that isn't an invitation to do a lot more, it's an invitation to do a bit more. And that's really how we've got to behave as we go through this rollout to make sure that we do it at the right stages, measure as we go along and make sure that we pick up. If there is an increase, we pick it up early enough to be able to do something about it. I mean, what I really wanna know is what Chris Whitty thinks about schools reopening when the sage advice says that that's not really what they should be doing. I'll go to that sage advice in one moment. First of all, Ash, your immediate takes from watching that. First of all, actually, I should apologize. Apparently our sound scrambled a little bit and when we spoke over the stream, we'll make sure we have that sorted the next time we do this. Ash. So in some ways you can see a quite different approach from Boris Johnson. There's a bit more emphasis on risk, on uncertainty and heavily caveatting commitments. On the other hand, you have this kind of irrepressible urge to set hard deadlines. So even though the briefing was labeled as all about data and not dates, the centerpiece of this press conference is obviously 8th of March, 12th of April, 17th of May, and then the 21st of June. So it seems to me that he can't help but make these big promises, even though he may well be a hostage to fortune, just like he was when he said that this would all be over in three months time, just like he was when he said that it would be unconscionable to cancel Christmas. So you do wonder if the vaccine being in play does radically change the reliability of the promises that the government makes or if in fact the elements of risk and randomness of the emergence of new variants, some of which might be more transmissible like they were with the Kent variant or indeed vaccine resistant could really throw a spanner in the works. The other thing that we didn't hear anybody talk about as well as schools which I know you want to come to is long COVID. So even though you can have a lower risk of hospitalizations and deaths because you vaccinated the elderly and the clinically vulnerable, it doesn't mean that you have a kind of Scott free population who can be happily infected with coronavirus. There are cases of long COVID severely impacting people even when they've had a mild case of coronavirus. We still don't know a lot about it, how and why it affects people the way it does or indeed for how long it will go on for. So there is a possibility of having some quite extreme long-term and debilitating conditions as a result of being infected with coronavirus even if you are young even if you don't have underlying conditions. And I don't really see anybody raising that as an issue because I do think that long COVID should be informing not only the pace of when we unlock but how we unlock what the kind of measures in place in public spaces. And it's not something you really see put to Boris Johnson or indeed Chris Whitty and Patrick Valance all that often. Let's talk about schools because I do think that is the most controversial announcement today, which was unfortunately not really mentioned very much in that press conference. And what's controversial about it is that not that schools are opening because I think everyone was expecting for schools to open to some degree from the 8th of March but the fact that they're all opening and all at once. So every student is expected to go back into school in person on the 8th of March as opposed by the teaching unions. It's also opposed by all the headteachers unions. So across the board when it comes to educators that's not always the case. Often when you have disputes over pay or pensions you end up having the NEU against the headteachers unions. Now they're all absolutely on the same page and they are backed up by Sage. So today we had Sage Minutes released from a meeting on the 11th of February. I think we can get a graphic five Fox which is what Sage said about schools. So they said there are a number of uncertainties in the modeling including the potential network implications of reopening schools. A phased reopening would allow the effects to be assessed which would be particularly valuable if schools were one of the first things to reopen as there will be more uncertainties in the emerging stages of releasing measures e.g. around the impact of vaccines. Now that's a really important point because basically and this is, you know to be fair to the government this seems to be in most of their plan. In most of their plan, the idea is we loosen this bit and then we wait a bit and we see what happens and then we loosen that bit and we wait a bit. And that's what you kept hearing Patrick Vallance and Chris Whitty sort of really reiterate that, you know basically I kind of read it and I'm saying the argument we've won is that you have to wait five weeks before one loosening of restrictions before the next so we can see what's going on if something's getting out of control if a variant is emerging we can then put the brakes on. But for some reason that logic hasn't been applied to schools. It's not just say to your upset about this let's get up a guardian story as well because Chris Whitty this is why I wanted him to push him on it. He's apparently very unhappy about these proposals. Now according to the guardian Whitty would prefer a phased return as the teachers and the head teachers do. Let's go to the quote from the guardian on that one. So this is 6B Fox. It says ministers and senior policy makers including permanent secretaries have attempted to convince Whitty that he needs to make a public statement of support for the policy to reassure parents and teachers about safety. It is understood. But so far he has not provided an endorsement to be included in the media materials to be distributed ahead of Monday's announcements sources said instead Whitty has offered support described as lukewarm and is expected to say it is down to politicians to make the final call on the timing of school reopenings. And we didn't even hear that sort of lukewarm endorsement today. Although we did hear and this is quite significant he did seem to endorse a strategy which doesn't mind if R goes a little bit above one. It's important that a little bit is very important because in a way we've had this dichotomy where what matters is if you go above one or below one and before we had vaccines that was absolutely right. The only way to have an epidemic shrink is for R to be below one. Now we do have vaccines if it's 1.1, then the vaccines maybe can catch up. If it goes up to 1.5 or two, then we will start to see a huge outbreak and we will see an increase in hospitalizations. We'll see lots of people get long COVID and we potentially see generation of new strain. So he seems to be happy with maybe an R that's 1.1 not ideal, but he seems to be willing to accept it. If it goes any higher, we could be in trouble. Let's go to this letter from the Education Union. So as I say, this is all of them, the Association of School and College Leaders, GMB, the National Association of Headteachers, NASWR, or NASUWT, the National Education Union, the National Governance Association. Everyone has signed this letter and it says, we urge the Prime Minister to commit to 8th of March only if the scientific evidence is absolutely clear that this is safe and at that point, go no further than a phased return of children and young people with sufficient time to assess the impact before moving to the next phase. We are increasingly concerned that the government is minded to order a full return of all pupils on Monday, the 8th of March in England. This would seem a reckless course of action. It could trigger another spike in COVID infections prolonged the disruption of education and risk throwing away the hard one progress in suppressing the virus over the course of the latest lockdown. Now that request from educators is very, very reasonable. You know, note they haven't said, you know, schools have to remain closed until everyone's been vaccinated. They've already been, you know, they've already asked to be vaccinated and the government have said no, even though they could have done it in a week and they haven't made that a red line, which you know, you might think is a very generous thing to do to say, we're willing to go back into schools even if we haven't been vaccinated. I know I'd be a bit annoyed knowing that I'm quite likely to get a vaccine in the next three months if I have to go into an environment where I'm quite likely to get it. That would kind of annoy me. So they're already being generous by saying, phased is good enough for us. But they've also said, you need to publish the scientific evidence. That's like the most basic demand you can make about government. If you're going to ask us to go into potential harms way, we at least want to see what's justifying this decision. And yes, the sage minutes have been published, but the sage minutes say the government should be doing something which they are not doing. Now, what I expect is that the government are going to try and square this circle by saying, yes, sage wanted us to do a phased return, but they didn't take into account that we are going to introduce these extra measures. And the extra measures are, and there's going to be twice weekly testing with lateral flow tests. So they're not the most accurate tests. But to be honest, if you test people twice a week and you test their households, you are quite likely to pick up infectious people. So that could have an effect on R as long as it's used in the right way. If they say it's as long as you've tested negative on a lateral flow test, you can come into school even if you've been in contact with someone with COVID, even if you had some symptoms yesterday, then that will be terrible. But if they use them in a sensible way, that could potentially reduce R. And they're also saying, and there will be face coverings in classrooms in secondary schools in six forms, which is welcome, should have been announced earlier, but there we go. But whatever you think of these policies, none of them change the fact that it's only really safe to do things in a phased way. If you send back primary school kids in two years from secondary school with all of these extra measures and you discover that with these extra measures, actually there isn't much of a risk, then yes, that's when you bring in the extra years. But the fact that they've said, we're gonna do it all at once. And then constantly said, the only thing stopping us is the unions. And whenever Keir Starmer speaks about it, they say, you're in the pockets of the unions. It seems to me almost like an active provocation of educators, which is, I mean, I was gonna say worrying, but it's nasty. Ash, what's your take on this? I mean, I think what it is about the school kids issues, that there's still a great deal of denial right at the top of government and in the conservative benches, about the extent to which schools are a vector of infection. And it's because they spent so long denying in the face of the evidence that schools being open poses a risk, not really because of the risk posed to children, although of course with children with underlying health conditions and those who live with vulnerable and elderly adults, there is a risk. It's simply because when you were going into the January lockdown, the majority of new cases were coming from secondary school aged people who then brought the virus back into their household and infected the people that they live with. And so that was really the turbo boosters, the engines of the kind of spread which have forced us into taking this much longer, much more restrictive lockdown than Boris Johnson or anyone else would have planned. And unfortunately that vein of denial, I think still is quite strong within the conservative party. The other thing is that they don't want to look as though they've count out to the unions because that would mean acknowledging the fact that unions are a legitimate part of civil society and they're not the enemy within, which is another thing which the Tory party really can't count on its doing. As you've said, the offer of a compromise on phased return to schools is actually a very gracious one on the part of the education unions and also reflects the fact that far from being selfish and only interested in self preservation, one of the things that the unions are trying to do is look out for society at large. The reason why they're making an argument for a phased return isn't primarily about the welfare or safety of trade union members. It's about the way in which schools act as a vector of transmission and can endanger all of us. And I think that that point is something which has gone under explored and it's because people are much more interested in presenting unions as a kind of illegitimate, monstrous player in politics rather than what they are, which is a perfectly legitimate part of civil society. Let's look at schools in the rest of the UK because we should have emphasized, I hope I did earlier, that everything that was announced today was about England. So Boris Johnson only has control and when it comes to lockdown measures in England. So the other nations of the UK will have a different time scale to this. What I want to focus on now though is just schools. So in Wales, they've gone for a phased return, so the kind of return that educators are asking for. So they actually are sending some kids back to school earlier than is happening in England. So three to seven year olds return to school from today, other primary school students and year 11s and 13. So that's exam years and we'll return from March the 15th. Of course, it's clear that's from the March, March the 15th, it'll depend on data. And then all secondary school pupils will be unlikely to return until after Easter, which is after the Easter holidays that would mean going back on the 12th of April. Scotland, a similar situation, all we know for sure in Scotland is that the youngest students have gone back today and that the health minister hasn't yet announced what the schedule will be for everyone else, but he has made it clear that it won't be the same as in England where all students are going back on the 8th of March. He said he wouldn't have the clinical advice, wouldn't allow him to do that, which is a bit of a dig, I think really at the English government who, yeah, it does seem to be just obnoxiously, I think obnoxiously sort of overbearing to say, everyone's got to go back at once, it's either zero or 100%. And I don't really see what the cost would have been in saying at least we'll do it week by week by week. The issue is having kids out of school for huge blocks of time. I don't think having year nine's and year eight's and year 10's out for an extra week or an extra two weeks is really gonna have a huge effect on child welfare, whereas sending every kid back to school at exactly the same time is an enormous risk when it comes to the epidemic and is obviously like incredibly stressful for anyone in the teaching profession because they're being told, you've got to test twice a week every student in the same week. It's a phenomenal task which is being put on the shoulders of teachers who've had a difficult enough time all ready. I'm not gonna go through all of the vaccine data because it was actually spoken about at quite great length by Chris Whitty. So I don't wanna repeat what he said. Obviously he understands it better than I do anyway. So you've heard it from the horse's mouth, but the good news essentially is that in the real world, the vaccines are working very well. So Public Health Scotland found that Pfizer and AstraZeneca jobs reduce hospitalization rates by 85% and 94% respectively. There's the different areas within the margin of error basically both very good vaccines, both massively reduce hospitalizations. And we're seeing from the siren study, which is of healthcare workers, one dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine reduces the risk of catching the virus by 70% and after the second dose is 85%. And we're seeing similar results out of Israel, which is basically they're all taking the Pfizer vaccine. They haven't got the AstraZeneca one. But what that is showing is that it seems to be 89% effective at preventing infection. So if you're seeing that degree of effectiveness against infection, these vaccinations really are gonna be able to give us herd immunity. If enough people take them, which I kind of have every reason to believe enough people will hear at least. So that's super, super positive. Obviously my main conclusion from hearing all of that is we need to flood the world with vaccines and especially these mRNA vaccines, which is the fires of the Moderna and we'll be having a few more come out because they seem to be particularly effective against both the variant that's predominant now and also the variant which was first identified in South Africa, but a similar variants been identified in Manaus, in Brazil and a similar one now in Bristol. So the mRNA, it's very difficult to say, mRNA vaccines do seem to be exceptional. Even though whatever vaccine I got offered tomorrow, I would get up in the middle of the night to go get any of these vaccines jabbed in my arms. To be honest, even the untested ones seem better than nothing. Ash, what do you, the news on the vaccines is great. It does seem in a way, we can go back to normal, can't we? Not immediately, obviously, because not everyone's been vaccinated, but if you've got a vaccine which is 90% effective against even transmitting the virus, then I mean, this is looking really good. This is looking better than anyone could have imagined sort of a year or so. So this is where the global context becomes really, really important because once we have enough vaccine uptake amongst the population that we're looking at a death rate which is sort of comparable with seasonal flu, then what's going on elsewhere really, really matters because we're going to have to have one genomic testing being widespread enough so that you can keep an eye on new variants emerging where you might need a new kind of vaccine distributed in other countries again. So that would be one element of it. And then the second bit would of course be the more you have the more you have the virus spreading in different countries, the more likely you have, the more likely the possibility, sorry my words aren't working today, the more likely the possibility of there being a variant which could be vaccine resistant, which then does have an impact on us and other countries as well. So this is where vaccine nationalism, the idea that protecting ourselves happens because we hoard and restrict the vaccines availability to other countries becomes really, really counterproductive. So think that once we see a decent enough uptake in this country, that's when there really is gonna have to be a push for richer countries, the UK, European countries, America, distributing vaccines which are only restricted from poorer countries because of IP laws. So that's the sort of caveat back to normal which is that, yeah foreign travel is still probably going to be there are going to be restrictions, there are going to be limitations unless or until you have enough vaccine distribution across the world and in particularly in the global south. Let's go to another related story related because it's about coronavirus and it's about this crooked Tory government unrelated because it's not about this unlocking process. It's a story which I mean emerged on Friday but blew up over the weekend in terms of its political implications. First let's go to a couple of comments. Michael Deary with a tenor, not to be a negative Nellie but I can't get hopeful after Johnson has constantly over promised and under delivered. He's akin to hiring Mourinho after he was fired from his last two jobs in humiliation. That was an uncalled for Mourinho reference. All of us are going through a difficult time right now. It's a lockdown, it's a pandemic and unlike other people, I have to suffer the humiliation of watching my team get spanked time and again because we insist on playing Eric Dyer for reasons unknown. So that was an entirely gratuitous and unwelcome Mourinho reference and I would thank you not to raise that in the comments again. All right Michael Deary, you can have your tenor back apparently. No, no, we'll keep the tenor. I didn't take offense at the question so I agree. It is difficult to get hopeful when Boris Johnson is announcing anything but I do have to say this plan, other than the schools thing, does seem more scientifically led than the plans they had in autumn and winter. It doesn't seem like they are in this sort of death drive which they were in December now. Now it seems like, unfortunately it took 120,000 deaths for them to learn from their mistakes but it seems like they have learned from some of them. Rajia D with a fiver. I am so conflicted, I don't think that school should open but can't wait until they do because my nephews are driving me completely crazy. I think that is probably a much shared sentiment today. Lots of people who are like really concerned about the schools going back but at the same time, you know, there are a lot of disadvantages to them being clueless, let's put it like that. And Michalakis, Michal... Oh, I love the name but I do struggle with the second one, Michalis Michaliliolokas with 40 pounds, sorry, I completely brutalized that. I am listening to you live again for the second time hence I'll send another super chat to support your effort. Michaliliolokas. Did you, you got it, sorry, did I go on it? I would pronounce this, I don't know if it's Michalis or Michalis, I would go with Michalis. Michalis, Michalolik, oh, I missed it up. I can't see both in the right. I can only do the surname when it's saying. Right. Mr. The Carl Oliath. Really different than listening to the next day. You practice that in your own time, we'll come back to it. Really different than listening the next day. Please note that the Greek government is leaving an inmate in hunger strike to die. Wow, I didn't know that. I'll have to look up why that is happening. I won't try again. I'll practice after the show. Let's go to our next story. Matt Hancock has been found to have acted unlawfully by Britain's High Court for not publishing contracts signed during the coronavirus pandemic. A judge said the health secretary had breached his legal obligation by not releasing details within 30 days after each contract was signed. We can go to a quote from the judge in question. So this is graphic 15B Fox. It's what Mr. Justice Chamberlain had to say. He said, there is now no dispute that in a substantial number of cases, the secretary of state breached his legal obligation to publish contract award notices within 30 days of the award of contracts. There is also no dispute that the secretary of state failed to publish redacted contracts in accordance with the transparency policy. The public were entitled to see who this money was going to, what it was being spent on and how the relevant contracts were being awarded. So very clear there from the judge. The judge saying he didn't comply with the law and also it matters. The public were entitled to see who this money was going to, what it was being spent on and how the contracts were awarded. And Matt Hancock, it seems was hiding those. Let's, we'll discuss about, we'll discuss this in a moment. Let's first see how Matt Hancock responded to the ruling on the Andrew Marsh show this Sunday. So you have nothing to apologize for at all despite losing a case and being legally in breach of the law. Look, people can make up their own view about whether I should have told my team to stop buying PPE and spend the time bringing forward those transparency returns by just over a fortnight or whether I was right to buy the PPE and get it to the frontline. You tell me that that's wrong, you can't. And the reason you can't is because it was the right thing to do. And legal cases about timings of transparency returns are completely second order compared to saving lives and there is no health secretary in history who would have taken the view that they needed to take people off the project of buying PPE in order to ensure that nine months later a health secretary didn't have a slightly bumpy interview on the Marsh program. Now that was actually a very persuasive argument put forward by Matt Hancock there. He's saying all the judge found was that we were, we were slightly late when it came to publishing these contracts. We were in the middle of a pandemic. Why would I possibly say you should stop getting PPE to fill in this bureaucracy? That doesn't matter. We're in the middle of a pandemic. Now it might sound persuasive. There are some problems. So Jolly and Morm who led the case. So he was the person who took this to the High Court. He said on the Owen Jones show yesterday the set of staff responsible for publishing contracts different people from the set of staff responsible for purchasing PPE. There's also quite a lot of evidence to suggest that the health department and the bosses of the health department Matt Hancock, et cetera were kind of encouraging people not to publish this in good time because they thought it would create bad press. Why might these contracts create bad press? Because lots of them, well, lots of money went to people who had personal connections to Matt Hancock and other Tory ministers. Now we've seen countless examples throughout this pandemic. I'm not gonna list them all for you right now. We talked about them on previous shows. It's actually just enough to talk about two stories which came out this weekend, this very weekend. There's so much here that I don't have to look further than two days for examples of cronyism. So the first is the case of Alex Bourne. He won a 30 million pound contract to produce test tubes. Now he also happens to be Matt Hancock's ex neighbor. And on Sunday, the Guardian reported Bourne was now under investigation from the medicines agency for hygiene breaches. So this is someone who didn't have experience of what he was doing, who got a very lucrative contract to make these test tubes. You know, it's understandable. We were in the middle of a pandemic. We did need people to make test tubes who weren't necessarily used to making test tubes. But the fact it went to an ex neighbor, all of that money and then there were problems with it. According to the Guardian, there were serious sort of breaches when it comes to health and safety because you wanna put out a sterile piece of equipment and apparently those processes weren't being followed. So it raises many questions. Second for you, also came out this weekend, the case of the PR firm Public First. So the firm is run by close associates of Dominic Cummings and was given a half a million pound contract for running focus groups on COVID-19 messaging, which also was conservative messaging according to a civil servant. Now, this was revealed in the Sunday times this weekend. So they leaked or they got hold of emails, maybe freedom of information requests from senior civil servants commenting on the deal. Now, Catherine Hunt is one of these civil servants. She is head of insight and evaluation in the cabinet office. She asked at the time whether the focus or she was asked at the time whether the focus group contract would go out to competitive tender. She replied to a colleague and I quote, ha ha, we're just procuring merrily and to hell with the consequences. So, I mean, in a way, you can understand that. We're just procuring merrily. We're in the middle of a pandemic. Why would we bother with the bureaucracy? But then in another exchange, she described the work as Tory party research agency test Tory party narrative on public money. She's later sort of said that, oh, this was actually just a joke, but you can kind of get a sense of what was going on in that department. Now, there are countless examples like this. They should make it a pretty awkward story for their health secretary, but Keir Starmer has been reluctant to inflict any wounds on Matt Hancock. Here he is speaking to skies Sophie Ridge. Matt Hancock has been found to have acted unlawfully over not publishing these COVID contracts. Should he resign? I don't want to call for him to resign. I do think he's wrong about the contracts. There's been a lot of problems with the contracts on transparency, on who the contracts have gone to, and there's been a lot of wasted money. And I think that is a real cause for concern. But at the moment, at this stage of the pandemic, I want all government ministers working really hard to get us through this, because whatever political difference is, what the public know is this needs to succeed. The vaccine rolled out needs to succeed. And I think in those circumstances, what I'd say to Matt Hancock is, you need to go further on the vaccine, go faster on the vaccine, you need to have a roadmap on Monday from the prime minister. But I think at this stage calling for people to resign is not what the public really wants to see. Ash, I know we've got John McDonnell on in any moment, so I'm going to ask you to be quick, but what do you make of Keir Starmer there? Did he miss a trick by not calling for Matt Hancock to resign? So I think that there's a case to be made from Keir Starmer's perspective is, don't call for someone sacking unless you're kind of sure that it's going to happen. In this case, Matt Hancock is reasonably well regarded. His position in cabinet is comfortable. He's not going to go. So I can see that from a position of political strategy. The problem is, is that he's also completely abdicated the terrain of telling a political story about procurement, about cronyism and about misuse of public money, which could really stick. And it's that pulling of the punches, which has meant that Keir Starmer's never really taken political opportunities as and when they've arisen. There's also been a problem about the coherence of labor story. On the one hand, you've got Rachel Reeves taking quite an assertive line about this misuse of public money, cronyism and such like saying that it's troubling, saying that you've got to look at this waste of money. And then ultimately, we're not going to do anything about it. We're not going to demand any consequences. Maybe we'll demand a bit more transparency and that's good enough. It doesn't really make sense internally. So I think that even if you can make a justification for this particular case about not calling for the resignation, I think what it points to isn't necessarily strategic now, so the part of Keir Starmer, but just the fact that he doesn't like picking fights unless he's 100% sure that his focus groups of five Tory voters is going to approve of it. I mean, I pissed off a lot of people on Twitter this weekend because I said I don't actually think Keir Starmer should have called for Matt Hancock to resign. And the reason I say that is because Matt Hancock actually during this pandemic has been one of the voices in Cabinet who has been calling for tougher restrictions. So before Christmas when we had a lockdown, which was three weeks late, which I think has killed tens of thousands of people, by the way, Matt Hancock and Michael Govor are on the side of let's have a lockdown now and Gavin Williamson, Rishi Sunak and Boris Johnson are on the other side. So if you take out one of the people who are a bit more sensible on restrictions from the Cabinet, then you could swing it into the favour of Gavin Williamson and Rishi Sunak. But what that, so that would be my position. But if I was Keir Starmer, I would explain that. So I would say, look, this is completely outrageous. Yes, it was a pandemic, but you can, by the way, procure things and also publish the details. That's not actually a particularly difficult thing to do. There are departments in the civil service who are trained to do that. This idea that it's just 10 people getting takeaway pizzas and working 10 hours a day and no one got round to filling in the forms isn't particularly consistent because we know actually that pressure was sort of put on people to say, don't release this now because it's going to be difficult in the press. So there is a strong argument you can make and Keir Starmer could have made without calling for him to resign, which is what I would have done. But instead, Keir Starmer says, look, people wouldn't want me to ask for him to resign, so I'm not going to ask him to resign and the story ends there. So no blows, no blows at all. You might as well not turn up to that interview really. We could talk about this for ages, but I want to bring in John McDonough. Welcome to the show. Hi, can I comment on what you've just said? Yes, you can. 100% you can. I'd love you to comment on what we just said. On the same Sophia Ridge program, I said to her, look, everyone's got to hold this government to account now, MPs, Keir Starmer MPs, major as well. And I said to her, why didn't you just ask him? Is it a requirement now? You have to be a donor at the Tory party to get a contract because that's how far it's got really. And the reason this is more significant than just the future of Matt Hancock is that this is quite a qualitative change in the way we do business. I've been a politician in local government. I administered a three billion pound budget. So I was awarding contracts. I've been a civil servant in local government administering contracts. And the reason you publish is actually, it's about openness and transparency. So it makes sure sunlight prevents corruption, hopefully, yet still goes on places. But also, you know, just administratively, sometimes you publish a contract and someone will come forward and identify a hole in the contract and you learn quickly and then you staunch the flow of the resources going out. And that, I think that's just the basics. And as soon as you start undermining the basics like that, it's soon, government soon starts unraveling and it can take a long while to bring it all back. You can unravel the basic principles and standards of government action overnight, but it takes generations then to rebuild that ethos of accountability and to be honest, honesty as well. And the thing that angered me about Matt Hancock and this is why I wanted him to go much sooner is because I struggled to get PPE into my local care homes at the worst peak of the pandemic and people were dying. And I was phoning around the care homes. I can remember dealing with one manager. They were trying to buy it themselves. Because they couldn't get enough. And that meant we were losing residents of care homes but we had large numbers of people who also unfortunately who were carers, who suffered badly as a result. So I would retain that sort of anger within me that I think Hancock should have gone for that failure. And then when they use the contracts, they bought Duff stuff that was unusable. You know, and it wasn't just a waste of resources. It was the fact that people were going unprotected in our hospitals and care homes and more widely. So I think we need to, I do think we need to hold the Hancock. And I understand like your tactical or strategic positioning because of Hancock's position in terms of a hope, in terms of restrictions within that cabinet. I understand that, but sometimes, you know, you just have to pin people down for their personal responsibility. You know, in local government when I was chair of finance and also when I was a local government chief executive associate in a local government association, councillors would be surcharged. If you issued a contract and you lost money on behalf of the council and you did it without taking all the relevant factors into account, it was what they called the Weddensbury principles. You take all the relevant factors into account and you dismiss all unreasonable ones. You could be personally surcharged for the loss to that local authority, either as a councillor and in the individual officers as well. That got abolished in the end. I think it was right, it was abolished, but just shows you how far we've come in terms of levels of accountability. Is there not? And we'll talk about the windfall tax in a moment, but I do want to stick on this issue for a moment because the worry I have about this or pushing really hard on the cronyism angle and I think one reason why potentially the Labour Party are holding back to some extent is the example of Kate Bingham. So I think if there had been a more assertive Labour Party, we know that they're very reluctant to take to hit the government where it hurts. They could have gone really hard on the employment of Kate Bingham, who just like Dido Harding is married to a Tory MP who had done some things, such as showing in a presentation to venture capitalists what the government were investing in and there were some voices on the left who were going, we did a piece on our show about her, but it has actually turned out that she's done a pretty good job. And also the government have been fairly explicit when it comes to vaccines, and this was obviously under her tutelage, under sort of her direction, that they had a policy of, look, we're in a pandemic, we're gonna throw cash at all of these different vaccine projects. Some of them are gonna win, some of them are gonna fail, we're gonna lose some money, but the most important thing is that we get as many vaccines as possible in a short amount of time. And they could say the same thing about PPE, right? A lot of it was dud, but some of it worked. And if you're in the middle of a pandemic, what the responsible thing to do is follow every lead, flash the cash here, there and everywhere, and just the main thing is that you get a few things that work. So in a population of 60 million, we can't find a competent administrator that can actually commission work and order it effectively. That isn't a member of the Tory party related to a Tory MP. That's farcical. That is absolutely farcical. But I mean, so the EU, they had a very sort of let's put all the eyes on the T's, sort of very let's do this by the book and their vaccine program hasn't ended up looking that good. This isn't about dotted eyes and T's in a contract. This is making sure that you operate in government above reproach from allegations of corruption or cronyism. And that's exactly what we should do. And there's enough people out there to be honest, who are sufficiently competent that any government could appoint without having to appoint or issue contracts to someone they met in a pub or gave a donation to a Tory party or was a neighbor at some point in time. The argument doesn't stack up. In terms of the Labour party, Ash is right. Rachel Reeves did after a lot of briefings she did an expose of the award of contracts and really in many ways actually savaged them for it. And that hasn't been consistently the line from the Labour front bench. I think we've got to, there's something beyond just party positioning as well. We've got to have a consistent line on standards in public life. And it cannot be that there's this association between one political party, the award of contracts and donations to a political party, as soon as you allow that to start slipping, you undermine the basic principles of public life. Let's get on to your windfall tax proposal. So this was a piece that, well, you mentioned the argument on Sophie Ridge, you've also got a piece in The Independent out yesterday, which is headlined a windfall tax on COVID profits is vital to help tackle debt. We need action, not just political speeches. That was the headline there. The argument is that let's have a windfall tax on people who've made supernormal profits during the COVID crisis to wind down people's debt so that we can all benefit from the recovery. What sort of inspired this, John? Is this also a sort of criticism of the Labour Party for saying now is not the time for tax rises? No, we've been doing this claim the future project for the last nine or 10 months. I think last April we launched it. And it was looking at what sort of society do we want to construct in the future as we come through the pandemic, but also what are some of the immediate issues we have to address, sometimes prefiguring the society that we want to create. And we had a series of about 20 different panels. They all reported and did individual papers and they're all up on the claim the future website. And I brought them together in a pamphlet just before Christmas. One of the panels was about debt and we brought together policy experts like Johnna Montgomery, absolutely brilliant academic who's published a book recently on debt and how to address it. Astra Taylor from the Debt Collective in America, she took over, no, she worked alongside David Graver, tragically on this issue of debt, set up the Debt Collective to campaign to eradicate debt and do the debt in the US. We had representatives from a whole range of organizations, Renters Union, because of the eviction threat and rent debt. Citizens Advice Bureau, again, because they'd done the analysis of debt. And also we had conversations with a group called StepChain. So we brought them all together. They published a paper last November and it set out the various, the scale of debt that people were confronting with after 10 years of austerity, but also the COVID related debt. And then we're looking at ideas about how you deal with it. Now, obviously, the key issue is to prevent people getting into debt. So that's about proper social security system. Social security system actually provides security. So the minimum income guarantee, that sort of idea. Obviously tackling the issue around universal credit at the moment. It also then looked at the areas where people were being ripped off if they went into debt. And that's about interest rates that are being charged for debtors in particular. And it's not just payday loans, it's credit cards and other aspects of lending. But then also there was a discussion about what happened with the bad debts of the banks in the banking crisis. And if you remember, what happened was is that the government came along, the Bank of England took over the bad debts of the banks and then refinanced them in a way in which actually saved the banks. It was part of that whole exercise of saving the banks. So Johnna did a piece of work where she was saying, well, why don't we do a sort of debt recovery, similar sort of thing. Maybe aim it particularly at rental debt because we've got about 600,000 people and rising now who are about a billion pounds worth of debt loaded on them and at a risk of losing their homes either through not being able to pay the rental or the mortgage. Why don't we do a similar debt recovery type process there where the Bank of England takes over that debt and then refinances it at a cheaper rate. That alleviates it. And it's quite a significant issue that's growing all the time. And it is as a result of the failures of the government to support people throughout the COVID crisis. You know, the furlough scheme which we proposed, the government took over, it didn't do it effectively, but the furlough scheme still meant you lost 20% of your income, your wages. If the rest of the country is like my constituents literally thousands of people been laid off. We've got the fire and rehire system where people are sacked, only rehired who on significant wage cuts, that sort of thing. So increasingly people are getting into debt and this is going to be something to carry over from COVID that I think will impact upon people's lives for a long period if we don't deal with it. So that was the problem that we wanted to address and those are the ideas. And we were looking at that sort of Bank of England debt recovery scheme, but also if there were any anxieties about initial funding of that, well, why not a windfall tax on those that have made quite significant profits or have had a very profitable COVID pandemic so far. So a lot of that, particularly on the property boom that's taken place, the banks that are issuing the mortgages have made billions. Landlords that the buy to let industry has had quite a boom 41% increase over the last COVID period in terms of the number of money. Well, they've made quite a lot of money and obviously they get significant tax breaks still. There's all the streaming services. So we thought, how about a windfall tax on some of those that actually yet we could cover the rental debt on that basis. And just let me finish this point. There's not, windfall taxes are not unusual. Gordon Brown introduced them. In fact, interestingly enough, and Brad Butler, when he was the Tory Chancellor, took over from the ATLEE government and they were large numbers of companies making profits through rearmments in terms that because of the Korean War, he introduced an excess profits tax, a windfall tax on them and use that in terms of public investment as well. So that was the idea and it's perfectly doable. And so how does it fit into the story, the labor party are currently telling because Kirsten has been quite explicit. We are, or the labor party is against any tax rises after the COVID pandemic because they don't wanna, they think that's the wrong thing to do when you're aiming for a recovery. And also, I mean, quite directly, it seems like Rishi Sunak is about to raise corporation tax potentially by 4%. Kirsten Amar has said that's the wrong thing to do. So it could be the case that while you're calling for a windfall tax, you're gonna be whipped in the next few weeks to vote against a raise in corporation tax. I mean, where do you stand on the positioning when it comes to tax in the labor party? Well, if you remember, we stood on a manifesto in 17 and 19 that would have restored corporation tax not to the exact level of 2010, but to close to it. What's, I think what Sunak will do is he'll make a lot of noise about increasing corporation tax but he won't do much immediately. He'll do it very slowly, if at all. And it won't be to, he's already sort of briefed up. It won't be to the level that we were proposing anyway. And there's some taxes that you don't wanna raise when you're in a potential of a recession that we are at the moment that will go on. So you don't wanna do anything that will stifle demand or anything like that. But there are some taxes that you'd want to introduce that you could then free up resources. So for example, a windfall tax on the profits of the banks would actually mean, therefore you'd lift the debt burden off a lot of renters and people have been falling behind for the mortgage that would free up their opportunities then to spend and that would increase demand within the economy. So it's perfectly rational. I think we'll most probably, I think we could win that argument in the Labour Party in the coming months but we've got to start talking about the policy program that we need now. One of the points I've been making is that Keir did his speech last week. It was a framing speech. She made reference to the radicalness of the ATLETE government that you want to replicate which is great. He focused on inequality and suits me down to the ground. That's great. But what I've been saying is once you've done the framing speech you need then to start creating that wider description of the society you wanna create and then people will only give you credibility if you then start looking at the policy program that will achieve that objective, that society that you want to create. And I've also said to them is that it's all by the good saying the election is 24, three years off or whatever. Not really. The reality is this, the policy program needs to be in place in the next 18 months because then you're into the general election in reality. And if there's a lesson from 2019, we've discussed this already, there's a lesson from 2019. You need to have a clear narrative but also you need the policy program that will achieve that narrative and you need time to bed it in. And the best way of bedding it in actually is not to announce just huge major policies nationally. You need to bed them in at that very local level about what that means for your local community, your street, your family, et cetera. And that takes time. And that was one of our failures in 17 to 19. We never got the narrative out there. I know we have swept away by Brexit largely but we still never got to countervail the narrative. And the policy program that we then produce might have been exciting but as everyone said, it just sound like a list of policy demands rather than something that people had credibility in as part of achieving a different society. So that's my advice to them. And I'm hoping really now that, I hope that they loosen up and actually start talking about individual policies now that could I think excite people again. What's your understanding of where the situation is with Corbyn at the moment? I mean, I was glad, I obviously wasn't surprised that I was glad to hear you say that for party unity it's essential for them to restore the witness to Corbyn. I've been trying to get across to them all the way along but no one seemed to be listening for a long time. On the day when Jeremy issued that statement that got him landed in, he was not just didn't just lose the whip that time, he was excluded from the suspended from the party. I said to them that was a complete overreaction. I didn't understand what the motivation was. It seemed like a sort of emotional reaction to something that was completely inoffensive as far as I could see. But since then, obviously, there've been lots of conversations going on. It was me who suggested that there should be talks to find a form of words to get through this whole situation and reinstate him. Then Jeremy went along with the discussions, went to the hearing from the NEC, got reinstated. And then you're getting out of the blue that you get the withdrawal, the whip, a complete tactical error because it just alienates everyone. And when you've got elections coming up, the best resource you've got is your membership. It is an act so our members, the whole point, we try to change the whole nature of membership to lay party into an engagement process where people felt they owned the party, they're involved in discussions, policy making, but they also had a role in getting the vote out. And what's happening as long as people are feeling excluded from the policy making, and then I thought, well, we'll just get the vote out mechanism. And that's not good enough for people. And then when they try and even discuss Jeremy, then some people get suspended. It's complete overreaction. So I'm hoping now that conversations will continue on. And they just think, if we're going to unite the party, just bring Jeremy back in. And actually, I know people, some people won't agree with this. Actually, he could be one of the most important campaigning assets that the Labour Party's got because he has a huge emotional commitment from our members and supporters. And he's articulate. Get Jeremy out there campaigning on a few issues, particularly around social justice. He'll mop the floor with the Tories, you know? And finally, something that, I mean, I think this is probably the most difficult question I'm going to ask you, which is that I hear from Twitter, people I speak to, that there are lots of people on the left who kind of are a bit at a loss what to do now. You know, the party's kicked out Jeremy Corbyn. It doesn't seem to... Well, at least the whip has been withdrawn from him. It doesn't seem to have any respect for the left-wing activists. It's suspending them left, right and centre, cancelling AGMs. And it's difficult for people to know what can I do other than despair. So sort of in very practical terms, I know you've got a strategic brain, John. I want to know what you think people can be sort of expending their energies doing to have some agency in either the Labour Party or in the country more generally. This is exactly the time when we need to mobilise the best and the most. And it takes a bit of, it's in the dark times you need the commitment, and this is when people will show their metal. And so this is the time to organise. And you have to do it with a bit of bloody-minded determination as well, which is so every mechanism you can use in terms of participation within the Labour Party, use it, your local branch, management committee, executive, via trade union organisation, via the affiliated organisation, get in there, raise the argument. And when you raise the argument, like I did on Sunday, you raise the politics. But then you also say, reinstate Jeremy Corbyn. Because actually, if you're going to unite us, reinstate Jeremy Corbyn. Actually, Jeremy has said this the same as me. The CLP members that have been suspended are equally important to Jeremy. We've always said that, and Jeremy has. So every time we go into an organisation, there's so many organisations to participate. And if you're a teacher, Socialist Education Association, you're a health worker, Socialist Health Association, you're a local trade union branch, you go in there, you argue your case with regard to the campaign or policy you're advocating. And I think we'll win the argument on that. But then associate that and say, but actually that won't be deliverable unless we have a united party. And to do that, reinstate Jeremy, reinstate the CLP members that have been suspended. And the more you do that, the more we'll build up a, I think an unstoppable climate of opinion within the party and beyond. But also, it's interesting, it infects the whole of the community as well. And the politicians themselves who want to get elected start waking up to the fact that they won't get elected unless they actually do relate to those people's arguments that actually they'll need for their support. I knew you'd have an answer for me, John. Thank you very much for that. And thank you so much for speaking to us again on this. Thank you very much. Absolute pleasure to have you on. Good to see you. All the best. All the best. We are going to wrap up the show. I'm not sure if we've still got Ash because there are some connection problems going on. You've still got me. We do. We do still have you. Amazing. You didn't let me ask my question to John. Well, I thought you were gone. Well, I had a pressing question, which is, John, are you going to be joining us in the club on June 22nd? Oh, yes. Send me and I. Amazing. We've got a few months to prepare. He's got to learn the choreography to work. Oh, that's a good image. Let's go to a comment. Nisha, 1976 with 9.99, please take some of my hard-earned cash and never discuss football on the viral media again. We won't discuss football if I have anything to do with it because I don't know anything about it. But I enjoy Ash's little vignette. See, they make me feel more connected, even if I don't watch it myself. Ash, it's been an absolute pleasure. Are you going to be... Is there any lifestyle changes you're going to be making to make yourself club-ready for 21st June? Yeah, I mean, I've been really... You know what? Being perfectly honest with you, I found this lockdown much harder than the other ones. And so when it comes to motivation and doing things which make me feel really good, like doing yoga, like I've just found that really difficult. And even though this government, much like Tottenham Hotspur, has a history of disappointment, of setting my expectations high and then bringing them low, there is something about seeing the pace of the vaccination and feeling hopeful again, which makes me feel a lot better. And that's a really good thing. And the other thing that I want to do is get back in the studio with you. So we're holding this government to account and criticising the things that they do and legitimately criticising the things that they do. I can look into your beautiful eyes, Michael, while I do it and not just getting the glare off the glasses. I thought you were going to use the Kier Starmer line if we'll support them when they do the right thing. Criticise them when they do the right thing. I'm doing the wrong thing. I'll have no truck with that. Absolutely no truck whatsoever. I think that's what the people would like us to do. You've been watching Tiskey Sour on the Varro Media. We'll be back on Wednesday at 7pm, of course. But for now, good night.