Sunday, 23 May 2021

POLITICO

POLITICO

Boris Johnson’s former top adviser says herd immunity was UK plan to fight coronavirus

Posted: 23 May 2021 01:16 AM PDT

Dominic Cummings, one-time senior adviser to Boris Johnson and now a perpetual thorn in the U.K. prime minister’s side, claimed the government pursued a policy of herd immunity to combat the coronavirus, while launching personal attacks against Johnson and his health secretary, Matt Hancock.

In a 42-tweet tirade late Saturday, Cummings, who was sacked by Johnson in November last year after a vicious power struggle, claimed that if "competent" people had been in charge of the coronavirus strategy, it may have been possible to avoid the first lockdown and there would “definitely” have been no need for lockdowns two and three.

He said the COVID plan “was supposed to be 'world class' but turned out to be part disaster, part non-existent.”

Cummings said herd immunity was the government's plan all along — until less than two weeks before the first lockdown was enforced. It was abandoned, he claimed, only when ministers were warned that it would lead to "hundreds of thousands choking to death" in hospitals.

In another tweet, he wrote that in early March 2020, "No10 was made aware by various people” that the official plan would “lead to catastrophe. It was then replaced by Plan B. But how 'herd immunity by Sep' could have been the plan until that week is a fundamental issue in the whole disaster."

He also wrote that “media generally abysmal on covid but even I've been surprised by 1 thing: how many hacks have parroted Hancock's line that 'herd immunity wasn't the plan' when ‘herd immunity by Sep’ was *literally the official plan in all docs/graphs/meetings* until it was ditched.”

He added that many people were “happy to believe Hancock’s bullshit” that herd immunity was not the plan “so they didn't have to face the shocking truth.”

Downing Street is already bracing for Wednesday, when Cummings is scheduled to appear before a House of Commons select committee inquiry into the handling of COVID-19.

Last month, Cummings launched a damning attack on his former boss, accusing him of favoring his fiancée's friends and pursuing "unethical" funding for a redesign of the No. 10 flat where the PM and his partner Carrie Symonds live.

EU ‘seriously concerned’ about press rights in Ethiopia

Posted: 22 May 2021 10:04 PM PDT

The EU on Saturday demanded an investigation into the killing of an Ethiopian journalist early this month and expressed “serious concern” over the expulsion from the country on Friday of Simon Marks, a reporter who had worked for the New York Times, POLITICO, and other outlets.

"The EU is seriously concerned about the shrinking space for freedom of the media and harrassment, arrests as well as restrictions imposed on Ethiopian and international journalists in Ethiopia,” an EU spokesperson said, in a statement.

“The recent news about the killing of one journalist from the Oromia Broadcasting Network is completely unacceptable and the case must be thoroughly investigated,” the statement said, adding: “The expulsion from the country this week of a journalist from The New York Times is also a matter of serious concern.”

Sisay Fida, the reporter for Oromia Broadcasting Network, was shot dead by unidentified attackers in the town of Dembi Dollo in the western part of the country, on May 9. The motive of the killing is still unknown. The television channel is controlled by the regional government. Oromia is the home region of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, and Abiy served on the network’s board of directors before taking office.

Marks, who had reported on atrocities committed by the Ethiopian military and its allies in the Tigray region, where a civil war has raged for months, was deported from Ethiopia in the early hours of Friday morning. His press accreditation had been rescinded in March and an appeal was recently denied, though his residence permit in the country was valid until October.

“The European Union will continue to stand up for the role of independent and reliable media all around the world,” the EU’s statement said. “We are committed, in compliance with international human rights law, to safeguarding media freedom and pluralism, as well as protecting the right to freedom of expression online and offline, including freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information without interference. Freedom of the press is an essential right and as such must be respected."

MEPs seek to tackle Orbán and Babiš over EU farm funds

Posted: 22 May 2021 07:38 AM PDT

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš are in the European Parliament’s crosshairs as lawmakers are pushing to use a high-tech data tool to root out longstanding misallocation of EU farm funds.

A lack of transparency and corruption in EU farm spending, the biggest single plank of the bloc’s regular budget, are being raised as core problems in the run-up to next week’s endgame of negotiations over the €270 billion budget of the new five-year Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).

The Parliament wants to expand the use of a data-mining tool called ARACHNE to keep a closer check on where CAP funds end up. But the parliamentarians face severe opposition in next week’s talks. The 27 EU countries, as represented in the Council of the European Union, argue against the tool being mandatory in the next CAP, preferring a voluntary approach, where the tool is merely available to countries if they want to use it.

For Ulrike Müller, one of the Parliament’s three main CAP negotiators, that is not good enough. “The Parliament wants to do something against Babiš and Orbán,” she told POLITICO in an interview.

Projects in Hungary and the Czech Republic, along with some in Slovakia and Italy, have triggered major concern about the allocation of agricultural funds. Hungary featured proinently in a 2019 New York Times exposé about EU farm subsidies enriching politically connected kingpins. A European Commission probe into Czech Prime Minister Babiš found he is still pulling the strings of his agriculture empire Agrofert, a big recipient of EU farm funds. Hungary says reports of misspending are biased and politically motivated, while Babiš repeatedly insists he has done nothing wrong.

The European Commission’s ARACHNE system is already used for EU subsidy programs in regional policy — on a voluntary basis. Müller’s proposal would see it included in the CAP for direct payments.

An EU Parliament insider said that the likes of Babiš and Orbán “would not be thrilled” if the use of the tool was made mandatory by Brussels in line with the Parliament’s wishes, but said that the main reason countries are opposing this is because of concerns the tool is simply not sufficiently developed yet.

Müller, the main rapporteur for the CAP file on financing and monitoring, is also concerned about the administrative burden this could create for national authorities. “We don't want to control each small farmer with the system, which would create a lot of administrative burden,” she said. It is easier to use the technology to track cohesion funds because they tend to be fewer and bulkier payments.

EU countries have already signaled they would only be open to using such a system provided the onus is on beneficiaries to provide the data to them, and it is not mandatory.

The proposal is also bogged down in technical difficulties. "The Commission is not ready to adopt this for all CAP payments now,” Müller said.

However, a European Commission spokesperson replied that the institution is pushing for the tool to be mandatory for governments to deploy in the next CAP. “The Commission is encouraging member states to use ARACHNE as it is useful for checking conflict of interest, fraud and irregularities but it takes time for all member states to harness the full potential of this tool,” the spokesperson said.

European People’s Party MEP Norbert Lins, the chair of the agriculture committee, said: "This system could help indeed to bring the corruption more under control. ” He said that the Parliament’s position as a whole is also to make this mandatory but that he could also understand doubts as to whether it is fit for purpose in the CAP.

According to the European Commission spokesperson, the EU executive will “ensure its obligation” to get the tool up and running for all EU governments to use in the new CAP starting 2023. Brussels also insists that the so-called error rate of funds being misused “remains at a very low level.”

Despite doubts about ARACHNE, the next farm policy does look likely to take a small step toward a more transparent system. Negotiators have agreed to increase the transparency of who is getting farm subsidies by obliging beneficiaries to disclose what broader legal entities they belong to. This could in theory reveal if a corrupt politician secretly controls a swathe of EU farmland, but is still a step short of full transparency about the original owner of every hectare of subsidized land. There is likely to be an attempt by the Parliament to ensure full transparency about CAP recipients during the negotiations next week, the EU Parliament insider said.

The spokesperson confirmed that the European Commission will start collecting and publishing information that governments collect about the legal entities receiving CAP payments.

Müller said: “We have really a huge success, because the information on the groups of beneficiaries will be published.” The Commission is not, however, planning to publish the information ARACHNE tool picks up, but could offer the Parliament a report in 2025 on how well it is working.

Gabriela Galindo contributed reporting.

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AstraZeneca chief admits UK got ‘priority’ access to coronavirus vaccine

Posted: 22 May 2021 06:49 AM PDT

The U.K. received preferential access to the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine, AstraZeneca chief Pascal Soriot revealed, while defending the jab and saying that it “has a future.”

Soriot told the Financial Times that the British government was guaranteed priority supplies as part of a return-for-investment agreement with the University of Oxford, which developed the vaccine. Soriot said that deal had been struck before AstraZeneca teamed up with the university to manufacture and distribute the jab on the international market.

"Of course when you do something like this as a government, you don't do it for free," he said. "What you want in return, and it's fair enough, is priority."

AstraZeneca is locked in a legal dispute with the European Commission, which accuses the British-Swedish pharmaceutical company of breaching its purchase agreement with the EU by failing to adhere to vaccine delivery commitments. AstraZeneca plans to deliver only one-third of the 300 million doses that it should have supplied to the EU before the end of June, which has led to tensions because there have been no such shortages in supply to the U.K.

Soriot’s admission of priority treatment for Britain differs from his previous statements, including in January when he said the divergence of supplies for the U.K. and EU could be explained because London signed its contract with AstraZeneca three months before Brussels — even though it was later revealed that the U.K. contract is officially dated August 28, one day after the EU’s contract.

British Health Secretary Matt Hancock hinted at preferential treatment for the U.K. in March when he said “they [the EU] have a 'best efforts' contract and we have an exclusivity deal" with the vaccine-maker.

In addition to the controversy about deliveries, the AstraZeneca jab is suffering from low popularity in Europe in comparison to vaccines such as BioNTech/Pfizer or Moderna following reports about rare cases of blood clots as well as lower efficiency rates.

Soriot, however, defended the shot, claiming that new studies had shown it had "exactly the same” efficiency as the BioNTech/Pfizer jab. He said his company’s vaccine was only slightly less effective against a new, aggressive Indian variant of the coronavirus than it is against the British variant of the virus, and added that a new booster shot against new variants that is currently under development had performed well in animal studies.

Commenting on the EU’s legal action against AstraZeneca, Soriot said: “You can look at the glass half empty: we've delivered less than we expected to deliver in Europe. You can look at the glass half full: we've delivered more than 400m doses [worldwide] and we've saved tens of thousands of lives."

The French company chief added: "I'm a European so I love Europe, don't get me wrong … But at the end of the day Europe is part of the world, it's not the whole world. And there are many countries around the world who actually want this vaccine, so this vaccine has a future."

Soriot said he had hoped that by selling the AstraZeneca vaccine at a non-profit price — more than six times cheaper than the Pfizer/BioNTech jab — he would do something good for the world, but claimed that this plan had been disrupted by “bad luck” and “people misunderstanding things.”

Soriot criticized the “traumatic” attacks on the company in past months. "People are just trying to do their best. They're just trying to produce a vaccine to save lives. It's that simple. And then, to be criticized every day, sometimes fair criticism, sometimes by armchair generals who have opinions about everything, is really disheartening," he said.

This article is part of POLITICO's premium policy service: Pro Health Care. From drug pricing, EMA, vaccines, pharma and more, our specialized journalists keep you on top of the topics driving the health care policy agenda. Email pro@politico.eu for a complimentary trial.

New leader of Northern Ireland’s DUP rated ‘bad or awful’ by voters

Posted: 22 May 2021 05:23 AM PDT

Support for the Democratic Unionists, primary critics of the Northern Ireland trade protocol, has fallen to a quarter-century low as their new leader repels voters left and right, according to a new poll.

The findings in Saturday's Belfast Telegraph offer grim reading for Edwin Poots, who is rated as "bad or awful" by 62 percent of those surveyed. That's by far the worst of any Northern Ireland party chief and 12 percentage points worse than the person he ousted as DUP leader, First Minister Arlene Foster.

The survey of more than 3,000 voters — conducted this week after Poots narrowly won a leadership contest against veteran MP Jeffrey Donaldson — shows the DUP's support slumping to just 16 percent, a depth last plumbed in the mid-1990s.

That's 3 points lower than at the start of 2021, when the Democratic Unionists already were hemorrhaging support because most unionists despise how Brexit has delivered a protocol that creates new regulatory barriers with the rest of the U.K.

It's also far below the levels needed to maintain the DUP's position as the largest party in the Northern Ireland Assembly. The Belfast legislature faces elections next year followed by a pivotal vote to sustain or suspend the protocol.

Poots argues that to reject the protocol, unionist parties will need to win a majority of seats in the 90-member chamber, where the DUP is only a single seat ahead of its arch-enemies from the Irish nationalist Sinn Féin party.

But Saturday's poll findings show just 41 percent support combined for the three unionist parties: the DUP, the moderate Ulster Unionists and the uncompromising Traditional Unionist Voice. The rest back parties that support the protocol because it avoids EU checks on Northern Ireland's border with the Republic of Ireland.

Sinn Féin alone attracts 25 percent, putting Deputy First Minister Michelle O'Neill in a commanding position to claim the first minister's post whenever the election comes.

For now, while Foster remains a lame-duck first minister, Poots and the DUP have yet to declare who will succeed her. Poots has ruled himself out of the job, insisting he must focus on widening the DUP's appeal.

The poll, which had a 2.3 percent margin of error, suggests the opposite is happening.

It asked unionists who backed the DUP's Assembly candidates in 2017 how they would vote next time. Nearly 45 percent said they would switch to the Traditional Unionists — who reject the protocol and continued cooperation with Sinn Féin — or to more compromising options in the Ulster Unionists and the cross-community Alliance Party.

They also much prefer the Ulster Unionists' Doug Beattie and Traditional Unionists' Jim Allister. Those party leaders attracted negative ratings from only 17 percent and 22 percent of unionists, respectively.

Even among DUP voters, Poots is viewed as the wrong choice. Only the party's 36 lawmakers in Belfast and London were eligible to choose between him and Donaldson in a 19-17 result. The poll found, however, that two-thirds of the DUP's grassroots wanted Donaldson.

Pollster LucidTalk managing director Bill White said the dismal ratings for Poots reflect "annoyance and worry in the DUP voter base, and in the wider unionist community, about the Northern Ireland protocol, sea border and Brexit in general."
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