Boris Johnson urged to scrap ‘sick’ Festival of Brexit – follow live

A busy start to the week. So what has been said so far?

Boris Johnson said the government was “definitely looking at” the possibility of travellers arriving in the UK being required to quarantine in hotels. The PM also said he was “looking at the potential of relaxing some measures” – but refused to guarantee schools would return before Easter.

Gordon Brown, former Labour PM, urged Johnson to go further on devolution – but said he did not think the SNP had a democratic mandate to hold a referendum on Scottish independence.

Therese Coffey, the work and pensions secretary, said the government would decide “soon” whether to extend the £20-a-week increase in universal credit – but abruptly ended her GMB interview after a dispute after Covid death rates.

Lib Dem MP Jamie Stone is leading calls for the government to ditch its planned £120m ‘Festival of Brexit’ – arguing it is “sick” to spend money on it during the pandemic.

The Highlands MP has launched a petition to urge the government to cancel the post-EU cultural celebration – and has already gathered thousands of signatures. “Britain’s culture calamity is real thanks to Brexit, yet the taxpayer is being asked to cough up £120m for bread and circuses.

He added: “Frankly, I thought this Brexit festival was sick before a pandemic – but given we’ve got kids starving, carers suffering on a minimum wage and millions of people out of work and locked out of financial support, well, it’s testament to how skewed the Tory moral compass really is.

Stone and fellow campaigners want the money to be redirected to a Covid-19 recovery fund. The MP called the idea of the festival “just mad” on Twitter on Monday.

In case you missed some of the big Brexit developments over the weekend, businesses revealed that UK government officials are encouraging them to set up new hubs in the EU to avoid Brexit trade disruption.

The firms say they were advised to establish subsidiaries in the bloc by both the Department of International Trade and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

Meanwhile, at least £100,000 of tariffs have been slapped on Fairtrade bananas from Ghana because of Brexit. Ministers are under pressure to explain why the levies are being charged, despite an announcement a last-gasp deal was struck between the UK and Ghana on New Year’s Eve.

And MEPs in the European Parliament voted to add British overseas territories to a tax havens blacklist. Robert Palmer, director of the Tax Justice UK campaign group, said: “Post-Brexit the UK tax havens have lost their protector within the corridors of Brussels.”

Haggis makers say they have seen many of its direct exports to the EU blocked at the border, with around 50 per cent of parcels said to have been rejected because of new rules. And some supermarkets in Europe have reportedly run out of haggis ahead of tonight’s Burns Night festivities.

Macsween’s managing director James McSween told The Daily Record it had experienced “quite significant difficulties” exporting to individual customers, and around half of parcels had been rejected.

Martin Morgan, from the Scottish Meat Wholesalers Association, said the volume of exports was down because of red tape woes. “Our biggest challenge is getting consistency on how the rules are applied before the product is dispatched to Europe.”

Shane Brennan, the head of the Cold Chain Federation – representing firms companies shipping chilled and frozen products – has accused ministers of complacency over the scale of Brexit problems.

Britain’s food industry was now “finding it very hard to trade,” he has written in a letter to The Times – warning the difficulties could be permanent without help. “It is not clear how, when and if volumes will recover to what they were before.”

He added: “The UK food industry faces a massive wall at the EU border, and we need help to scale it. Ministers seem convinced these are ‘teething problems,’ the result of a truculent business community not believing change was coming … That is not my experience.”

All council tax bills should be frozen with the government handing billions to town halls to meet the huge costs of the Covid pandemic, Labour has argued.

The party is warning that householders face an average rise of £93 in April – just as the furlough scheme is about to shut, threatening a further spike in unemployment.

The “council tax bombshell will hit many hard-pressed families at the worst possible time – just as many receive their p45s,” said Steve Reed, Labour’s local government spokesman.

Boris Johnson has been unable to shed any light on the reopening of schools this morning, as his backbenchers demand a timetable for pupils’ return.

Asked if he could give a firm date, the PM said: “Schools obviously will be a priority but I don’t think anybody would want to see the restrictions lifted so quickly while the rate of infection is still very high so as to lead to another great spread of infection.

Visiting a vaccination site at Barnet Football Club in north London, He added: “I understand why people want to get a timetable from me today, what I can tell you is we’ll tell you, tell parents, tell teachers as much as we can as soon as we can.”

Keir Starmer is self-isolating for a third time after coming into contact with someone who tested positive for Covid. The Labour leader said: “I have no symptoms and will be working from home until next Monday.”

Taking the Scottish government to court over the holding of another independence referendum would not be a “good look” for Boris Johnson’s government, according to one of Nicola Sturgeon’s ministers.

The SNP released a “roadmap” to an independence referendum at the weekend, which said another vote could be held if a pro-separation majority is returned to Holyrood in May, even if the necessary Section 30 order is not granted.

It seems the party is preparing to force the government into a legal showdown, saying it would then be for the UK government to seek to block a referendum through the courts.  

Mike Russell, Scotland’s constitution secretary and SNP president, made clear the separatist party would claim to have the “people of Scotland” on its side if it won the Holyrood election.

He told the BBC: “I think it’s such a bad look for any government to say, ‘Even if the people of Scotland vote for something, we’ll take them to court to stop them.’

“(It’s) not just the government – that would essentially be taking the whole people of Scotland who voted for it to court.”