UK coronavirus live: Birmingham, Kent, Greater Manchester, Newcastle among regions in tier 3 measures
Birmingham #Birmingham
9.41am EST 09:41
NHS England has recorded 351 further coronavirus hospital deaths. There were 82 in the north-east and Yorkshire, 81 in the north-west, 78 in the Midlands, 41 in the south-east, 28 in London, 23 in the south-west and 18 in the east of England. The details are here.
That is broadly in line with the totals for yesterday (353) and a week ago today (346), and up on the total for two weeks ago today (317).
9.35am EST 09:35
Almost 99% of the English population will be under the higher tier 2 and tier 3 lockdown levels when they come into effect.
Three local authorities – Isle of Wight, Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly – which have a combined population of 713,573 and make up just 1.3% of the entire English population, will come under the least severe “medium level” restrictions.
A further 57% of the population – including all of London as well as other areas including Oxfordshire, Surrey, West Sussex, Devon, Gloucestershire and Somerset – will face “high level” tier 2 restrictions.
Two in five people (41.5% of the population of England) will come under tier 3, including those living in areas such as Greater Manchester and Lancashire.
Updated at 9.38am EST
9.31am EST 09:31
Reaction from across the south-west of England to the tiering allocations have been mixed. There is optimism in Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, which are in tier 1, but frustration in Bristol – and its neighbours South Gloucestershire and North Somerset – which are tier 3.
Bristol city council reckons being in tier 3 will cost it £2.8m a month to support businesses and vulnerable people.
Devon has been put into tier 2, just hours after it emerged that the Nightingale hospital in Exeter will receive patients for the first time.
But Anne Marie Morris, Tory MP for Newton Abbot, has pointed out that Teignbridge in south Devon has one of the lowest Covid rates in England. She tweeted:
Updated at 9.39am EST
9.21am EST 09:21
Tory backlash against new restrictions grows as 1922 Committee chair says he will vote against
Sir Graham Brady, the chair of the Conservative backbench 1922 Committee, has said he will vote against the new regulations for England next week. His constituency, Altrincham and Sale West in Greater Manchester, has been placed in tier 3. Brady said that was no surprise, but that “it is nonetheless deeply disappointing because there is simply no good, logical explanation for it”.
In an interview on the World at One, Brady said that many of his colleagues were annoyed at the tiering decisions taken because they were “heavy-handed”, ignoring local factors in favour of a countywide approach.
He said he would vote against the regulations next week.
I will vote against it. I have severe reservations on so many different levels. I do think that the policies have been far too authoritarian. I think they have interfered in people’s private and personal lives in a way which is unacceptable …
When we look at the experience in particular of places like Greater Manchester, which actually have barely been out of restrictions for the last eight months, I think there is a limit to what it is reasonable to expect communities to absorb.
Graham Brady. Photograph: Simon Dawson/Reuters
Updated at 9.41am EST
9.10am EST 09:10
Johnson appoints former Treasury civil servant and banker as chief of staff
Boris Johnson has appointed a chief of staff. He is Dan Rosenfield, a former Treasury civil servant and banker.
Rosenfield will replace Sir Edward Lister (now Lord Udny-Lister), who has recently been serving as acting chief of staff. But in practice Rosenfield will replace Dominic Cummings, who was effectively Johnson’s chief of staff while he served in Downing Street until his resignation earlier this month – although he resisted taking the role formally.
This is what No 10 said about Rosenfield in a briefing for journalists.
Dan joins No 10 from Hakluyt, a strategic advisory firm for businesses and investors, where he has been global head of corporate clients and head of the UK business since 2016. Prior to Hakluyt, he was a managing director, investment banking at Bank of America. He was previously an official in the UK Treasury for over a decade, including four years as principal private secretary to chancellors Alistair Darling and George Osborne, from 2007 to 2011. Dan is also chairman of World Jewish Relief, the British Jewish community’s humanitarian agency.
Updated at 9.40am EST
8.56am EST 08:56
And Conor Burns, the Conservative MP for Bournemouth East, has also criticised the Bournemouth decision.
8.33am EST 08:33
The Conservative MP Tobias Ellwood represents Bournemouth East, which is in tier 2. He says he will not be backing the government in the vote on the new measures.
8.28am EST 08:28
Tax increases and spending cuts totalling £40bn will be needed to balance the books, as a combination of weak growth and pressure on the NHS and welfare budgets leads to worse than expected public finances in the coming years, the Institute for Fiscal Studies has said. My colleague Larry Elliott has the story here.
Updated at 9.42am EST
8.25am EST 08:25
Stephen Brady, the leader of Hull city council, has defended the decision to put his city in tier 3. Earlier this month it had the highest coronavirus rate in England, at 785 cases per 100,000, but that has now fallen to 530 cases per 100,000.
Brady said:
Tier 3 is not where anyone wants to be but, with our infection rates still very high, it is what we expected and it’s the right place for Hull to be at this time.
Updated at 8.42am EST
8.18am EST 08:18
This is from Sacha Lord, Greater Manchester’s night-time economy adviser.
8.16am EST 08:16
“Lockdown must not become limbo,” says Dan Jarvis, the Labour mayor for the Sheffield city region. He says he wants the region to come out of tier 3 “as a matter of urgency”.
I welcome government plans to review our tier arrangements every two weeks, because every extra day we are under restrictions could be the difference between a business surviving the pandemic or going under. It is now essential we get a roadmap to get us out of tier 3 as a matter of urgency.
Updated at 8.42am EST
8.13am EST 08:13
Boris Johnson will be joined by Prof Chris Whitty, England’s chief medical officer, and Sir Patrick Vallance, the chief scientific adviser, at his No 10 press conference this afternoon.
Updated at 8.43am EST
8.12am EST 08:12
This is useful – a map showing which parts of England are in which tiers.
Updated at 8.43am EST
8.10am EST 08:10
Sturgeon says safest way to spend Christmas is at home, with own household 
Nicola Sturgeon was challenged at FMQs about “confusing” messaging around Christmas, with UK-wide relaxations accompanied by extreme caution from the first minister and warnings from Scottish public health experts about the dangers of a subsequent third wave.
Sturgeon said that Christmas presented a “really complex situation” and that the agreed cross-UK relaxation was “a recognition of reality” that some people would feel unable to stay within the rules as they are now. She said that rather than allowing people to break those irules in a “haphazard” way, it was better to set out fresh guidance, but with default advice to stay at home.
She confirmed to MSPs that initial guidance on Christmas had been published this morning, but reiterated “the safest way to spend Christmas is in our own home, with our own household in our own local area”.
She said that there should be no more than more than 8 people over the age of 12 in any festive bubble, and it should include only one extended household. The advice is also that those wanting to visit someone in a care home over Christmas should not form a festive bubble.
She took FMQs as she announced a further 1,225 positive cases overnight, with 1,125 people in hospital with the virus, 31 fewer than yesterday, 90 in intensive care, six more than yesterday, and a further 51 deaths.
She said that Scotland’s R number estimate is expected to remain slightly below 1.
Updated at 8.13am EST
8.03am EST 08:03
Raab tells MPs government will legislate to allow it to abandon 0.7% aid target
In the Commons Dominic Raab, the foreign secretary, is now making a statement on development spending. He has just told MPs that the government will legislate to allow it to abandon the 0.7% target for overseas aid spending as a share of national income. But he insisted that the UK was still determined to remain an international leader in this field.
8.00am EST 08:00
In a joint statement on Leicester being placed in tier 3, the three local Labour MPs, Liz Kendall, Jonathan Ashworth and Claudia Webbe, issued a joint statement saying:
This has already been an unbelievably tough year, and the news that Leicester will go into tier 3 – on top of the 150 days of our extra lockdown – is extremely difficult to hear.
The government must now spell out how we can get out of tier 3, and the measures they will use to review Leicester’s position, to give people hope their sacrifices will make a difference.
Updated at 8.14am EST
7.56am EST 07:56
Schools who used reserves to pay for mounting pandemic costs while poorer performing ones have been bailed out will have to “just lump it,” parliament’s public accounts committee has heard.
Cases of schools who have racked up large extra bills were raised with the Department for Education’s most senior civil servant by Tory MP Richard Holden, who said one of his local schools would spend an extra £100 per pupil on cleaning this year.
Some schools who had dipped into their reserves and felt they were being punished while others were being bailed out wanted to know if they would be reimbursed.
He was told by Susan Acland-Hood, the DfE’s permanent secretary, that she completely understood the feelings of head teachers who had managed schools well and built up reserves. But she added:
I think it’s very hard for us to argue to the Treasury the contrary case, which is that schools which have significant reserves should be given extra money.
So the result is they are just going to to have to lump it on that one.
Meanwhile, the average size of bubbles of children and others who had to come home and self isolate after a case of covid-19 had started to come down “quite significantly” since the start of September after collaboration between the DfE and the Department of Health, said Acland-Hood.
The first port of call for schools should be the DfE helpline, she added, and it would be rare for advice to be given for entire year groups to be sent home. Rather, it would be more a case of examining who the particular pupil or member of staff had been in contact with.
Updated at 8.14am EST