Future Timeline

Wed 14 Jul 2021

Ministers are expected to introduce a statute of limitations to end all prosecutions related to the Troubles before 1998 to stop Northern Ireland being “hamstrung by its past”.

Brandon Lewis, the Northern Ireland secretary, will outline the approach in the Commons on Wednesday as government sources rejected claims it would amount to an amnesty for army veterans and paramilitaries.

A source said: “We want to give Northern Ireland society the best chance of moving forward as one – to do that we must confront the difficult and painful reality that the realistic prospect of prosecutions is vanishingly small and while that prospect remains Northern Ireland will continue to be hamstrung by its past.

“Our legacy package will support Northern Ireland to move beyond an adversarial cycle that doesn’t deliver information or reconciliation for victims and survivors nor end the cycle of investigations against our veterans.”

Louise Haigh, the shadow Northern Ireland secretary, said Boris Johnson needed to explain the move.

Thu 15 Jul 2021

The UK’s competition watchdog has imposed fines totalling more than £260m on pharmaceutical companies after an investigation found that they overcharged the NHS for hydrocortisone tablets for almost a decade.

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) found that the drug’s makers Auden Mckenzie and Actavis UK, now known as Accord-UK, used their position as the sole providers of hydrocortisone to inflate the price of the drug. Tens of thousands of people in the UK depend on hydrocortisone tablets to treat adrenal insufficiency, which includes life-threatening conditions such as Addison’s disease, the CMA said.

The investigation found that the companies were able to inflate the price of hydrocortisone tablets by more than 10,000% compared with the original branded version on sale in 2008. This meant the amount the NHS had to pay for a single pack of 10mg tablets rose from 70p in April 2008 to £88 by March 2016.

Thu 15 Jul 2021

Boris Johnson has set himself on a likely collision course with the authors of a new national food strategy by effectively ruling out its key recommendation for a £3bn sugar and salt tax to tackle the dominance of junk food.

The government-commissioned report, drawn up by the restaurateur Henry Dimbleby, called the taxes a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” to reduce reliance on processed food, with the resultant burden on the NHS.

Asked about the proposal after a speech in Coventry, Johnson said: “I’m not, I must say, attracted to the idea of extra taxes on hardworking people. Let me just signal that. I shall study the report with interest.”

He was non-committal on the report more generally, saying: “It’s an independent report. I think there are doubtless some good ideas in it. As I said earlier on we believe in tackling obesity, trying to help people to lose weight, promoting exercise and tackling junk food advertising and so on.”

The report’s most eye-catching recommendation would be a levy of £3 a kilo on sugar and £6 a kilo on salt sold wholesale for use in processed food, restaurants and catering, which it says would be a world first. This would raise up to £3.4bn a year, some of which should fund an expansion of free school meals to an extra 1.1 million children and an overhaul of Britain’s food and cooking culture.

Wed 14 Jul 2021

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”.

The Guardian understands there had been a significant clash of opinion with a particular colleague.

Berry, who was the party’s candidate for London mayor, had been co-leader with Jonathan Bartley, who announced he was stepping down earlier this month. She said she had been agonising over whether to stand in the forthcoming leadership election but said she felt divisions in the party were too great.

A vocal supporter of trans equality, Berry had said one of the first things she would do as mayor would be to set up a commission on the rights of trans Londoners. In her resignation letter on Wednesday, Berry said there had been significant disagreement with colleagues elected to the party’s frontbench team.

She said the party’s democratic structure meant decisions could be made that leaders did not agree with and she felt it was irreconcilable with her own position.