Boris Johnson has come under fresh pressure from metro mayors to change tack and keep mask wearing compulsory on public transport in England from Monday. At a news conference this afternoon six Labour metro mayors said they would all be doing everything they could to require passengers to keep wearing masks from Monday. But metro mayors have different powers in different places, and mostly their powers over transport are very limited. Andy Burnham said he would mandate the wearing of masks on trams in Greater Manchester, using conditions of carriage (see 10.25am), and Jamie Driscoll said he would be doing the same on the Tyne and Wear metro. Tracy Brabin and Dan Jarvis said they would require the wearing of masks in bus stations in West Yorkshire and South Yorkshire respectively. Otherwise all six mayors just stressed that they would encourage people to keep wearing masks, in order to protect others. Sadiq Khan, who has more extensive control over transport in London, will use conditions of carriage to mandate masks on buses, tube trains and other Transport for London services. Andy Street, the Conservative mayor of West Midlands, also said today he would encourage mask wearing. (See 3.30pm.) But he admitted he did not have the power to enforce this, and his statement does not go much beyond the official government advice (pdf), which says the government “expects and recommends that people wear face coverings in crowded areas such as public transport”. Grant Shapps, the transport secretary, has said the government actually wanted some transport operators to carry on making mask wearing compulsory in England after 19 July. Wales has announced a relaxation of coronavirus restrictions from Saturday, with hopes of lifting most, but not all, legal requirements from 7 August. Shapps has announced that the Balearic islands are moving from the green list to the amber list. He gave details of the latest changes to the green/amber/red lists on Twitter.
Plans to end all prosecutions relating to the Troubles before 1998 have been announced by the UK government, which said it was a “painful truth” that criminal investigations were unlikely to deliver successful outcomes. Football banning orders are to be changed to cover online racism so that people found guilty of online abuse could also be kept away from matches, Boris Johnson has said. Siân Berry is to quit as leader of the Greens, citing conflict within the party over transgender rights and claiming it had been a “failure of leadership” on her part that the party was sending “mixed messages”. That’s all from me for today. But our coronavirus coverage continues on our global live blog. It’s here.