Boris Johnson’s former top adviser Dominic Cummings has alleged there was a lockdown-breaking party in the Downing Street garden in May 2020 after an emailed invitation to “socially distanced drinks”. The NHS in England is experiencing the highest number of Covid absences since the vaccine rollout, with more than 40,000 staff unable to attend work on two days in the past week, prompting claims that hospitals are “simply not safe”. The UK has reported a further 178,250 Covid cases as the Omicron variant continues to fuel a wave of infections. Labour has challenged Lord Geidt, the PM’s independent adviser on ministerial standards, to explain why he thought it was acceptable for Boris Johnson to receive financial help from someone also lobbying him over policy. In an open letter to Geidt, Angela Rayner, the deputy Labour leader, said that even though Lord Brownlow may have had altruistic interests for trying to get the PM to back his “Great Exhibition” plan, there was still a conflict of interest. She wrote: Do you stand by your original conclusion that there could be “no reasonably perceived conflict” in the prime minister seeking the support of a donor who at the same time is lobbying him for government support of a project they are promoting? It is irrelevant in this regard whether Lord Brownlow’s motives are altruistic; the issue is that a reasonable person could surely perceive that his financial relationship with the prime minister has provided him with privileged access to government, and that relationship was undeclared at the time. This leads me to a more serious and general point. You appear to set the standard for a potential conflict of interest as being that in your personal judgement any third party was acting with altruistic motives. This is not the test that is set out by the ministerial code. It is also a far weaker one than is set, for example, by the House of Commons members’ code of conduct. This suggests that you will hold ministers to a lower standard of transparency than backbench MPs. The full text of Rayner’s letter is here.
The attorney general has said she is “carefully considering” whether to refer the Colston statue case to the court of appeal after a jury cleared four protesters of criminal damage over the toppling of the monument. The Labour MP Jack Dromey died suddenly in his flat this morning, his family has said. That’s all from me for today. But our coronavirus coverage continues on our global live blog. It’s here.