Brexit news - live: Protocol checks could be ‘overwhelmed’ after grace period as Foster blasts ‘tone deaf’ EU

A great deal of work still needs to be done to repair the damage caused by the Windrush scandal, the home secretary has said.

Priti Patel told the Home Affairs Committee that it would take time to “build bridges” through outreach and the government’s Windrush Community Fund.

“It is absolutely taking time to build bridges, raise awareness and give people trust and confidence about the scheme and the ability to claim on the scheme,” she said.

Labour has criticised the government’s £400 million funding pledge to help pupils catch up on lost learning, saying it does not go nearly far enough.

Kate Green, the shadow education secretary, said: “This is not adequate and will not make up for the learning and time with friends that children have lost.”

She also said that there had been no mention of support for children’s mental health and wellbeing, a “fundamental” measure to ensure recovery from the pandemic.

“Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak spent more on the failed Eat Out to Help Out Scheme than they will on our children’s recovery. This package amounts to just 43p per day for each child,” Ms Green added.

Home secretary Priti Patel has claimed that the police have not been “hindered” by the accidental deletion of 209,550 offence records from its computer system.

Speaking to the Commons Home Affairs Committee, the minister said “209,550 offence records were wrongly deleted which were associated to 112,697 persons records”.

She added that no records of convictions had been erased.

When asked what the impact of the mistake was, Ms Patel said: “We are not hearing from policing that this has hindered them in terms of day to day policing at all.”

Keir Starmer has called on the government to give everyone who has to self-isolate £500, as three in ten people are currently failing to abide by quarantine rules.

Speaking at PMQs, the Labour leader said many people cannot afford to self-isolate because the government does not offer them enough support.

“Why, after all the billions the government has thrown around, is it still people in low paid jobs who are at the bottom of this government’s priority list?” he said.

The prime minister should “have a word” with Tory MPs who have been calling coronavirus data into question, Keir Starmer has said. 

He said that this threatens to derail the UK’s recovery from the pandemic. “Does the Prime Minister agree that these kinds of comments are irresponsible and undermine our national recovery?” the Labour leader said.

In response, Boris Johnson dodged the question, saying the roadmap will put the country on a “cautious but irreversible journey to freedom”.

Boris Johnson has suggested the UK will not boycott the Winter Olympics in Beijing next year, after campaigners and politicians called on the government to take action over human rights abuses in China.

Speaking at PMQs, Ed Davey, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, said: “Today, millions of Uighur people in China live in fear under a cruel regime.”

He added that a “genocide” was being perpetrated against the Uighur population in China and called on the prime minister to implement a boycott of the games.

Mr Johnson replied by saying that UK governments are “not normally in favour of sporting boycotts”.

Matt Hancock appears to have taken down a photograph of the local pub formally run by an acquaintance caught up in controversy over a government Covid contract.

A company owned by Alex Bourne – the former landlord of the health secretary’s local pub the Cock Inn – is currently under investigation by the UK’s medical regulator over a contract to produce Covid test vials for the NHS.

In recent months Mr Hancock has been seen doing live TV interviews with a framed photo of the Cock Inn, located in his West Suffolk constituency, on the wall of his study. But on Tuesday, a different picture could be seen in its place.

My colleague Adam Forrest reports:

Businesses in Northern Ireland need “certainty” around post-Brexit grace periods, the Northern Ireland Retail Consortium director has said.

Aodhan Connolly warned the NI Protocol had produced the greatest disruption to commerce since the foundation of the state a century ago, saying: “It has to lead to certainty, not just for Northern Irish businesses but for those people who want to invest in Northern Ireland.”

Mr Connolly told Stormont’s Economy Committee being part of the EU and NI presented opportunities for the manufacturing sector but risked leaving others behind.

“We need to ensure that we take all sectors of business with us,” he said.

“There are going to be some changes. It is a new trading regime, it is the biggest economic shift as far as supply chains and how we trade since the foundation of the state 100 years ago.”

Our deputy political editor Rob Merrick reports the following:

In the Commons, the health minister Edward Argar has refused to apologise for his boss Matt Hancock’s incendiary claim that that there was “no national PPE shortage” last year.

Caroline Lucas, the Green MP, said the comment – made after the High Court ruled against the health secretary over the award of contracts – was “so insulting” to medical staff forced to wear bin bags and home-made goggles, demanding he say sorry.

But Mr Argar insisted a National Audit Office report backed up the claim, because the NHS did not run out of PPE, although there were what he called “local shortages and challenges”.

Labour secured the urgent question to put pressure on Mr Hancock, who has brushed off the court ruling as simply “delayed paperwork”, amid a national emergency.

Significantly, Conservative MPs clearly back the argument that he did what was necessary to meet that emergency – despite the furore over contracts going to Tory friends, including the former landlord of the health secretary’s local pub.