UK Covid: Williamson hopes children will get 'time in schools' this summer - as it happened
This live blog is now closed. For the latest coronavirus news from around the world, head to our global Covid blog
- Johnson pledges more Covid support in budget than Labour calls for
- More people with learning disabilities to be invited for Covid jab
- Johnson & Johnson one-shot vaccine effective, US body says
- Vaccine trials for variants to start in summer, MPs told
- Global coronavirus updates - live
6.22pm GMT
On the summer holidays, what we have done in terms of a 200m programme is we want schools to be putting on great activities, whether it is education-led or even wellbeing-led, so we'd be hoping that schools can be offering that, draw down that funding in order to be offering that to children. Yes, we'd hope that schools are offering time in schools for children and that's why we've put the funding there.
We are putting trust in teachers. That's where the trust is going - there is going to be no algorithms whatsoever but there will be a very clear and robust appeals mechanism.
During the pandemic big corporations like Amazon have cashed in while working people struggle to get by. Labour should support both raising corporation tax and a special Covid-19 windfall tax for sectors that have made super profits.
We should use the cash to fund a new future for Britain based on a green jobs boom, a massive program of social house building, and taking rail, mail and utilities back into democratic public ownership.
Related: Coronavirus live news: EU to debate vaccine passports; Switzerland to bring back outdoor gatherings
5.56pm GMT
In the preface to the new edition of his expert and provocative book, The Covid-19 Catastrophe, Richard Horton, the editor-in-chief of the Lancet, says:
One hears otherwise intelligent and sensible people talking about a return to normality by the spring or summer of 2021. But there is no simple or straightforward return to the old life that we enjoyed before Covid-19. There is only a new normal to confront.
Boris Johnson has said he expects UK cities to bounce back to being full of buzz and excitement again" after lockdown.
83% of Britons, however, think lockdown will have fundamentally changed cities long into the futurehttps://t.co/lIBR5V5eyj pic.twitter.com/SxEuE0ZqWA