UK coronavirus live: Birmingham, Kent, Greater Manchester, Newcastle among regions in tier 3 measures | Politics

Boris Johnson has appointed a chief of staff. He is Dan Rosenfield, a former Treasury civil servant and banker.

Rosenfield will replace Sir Edward Lister (now Lord Udny-Lister) who has recently been serving as acting chief of staff. But in practice Rosenfield will replace Dominic Cummings, who effectively was Johnson’s chief of staff while he served in Downing Street until his resignation earlier this month – although he resisted taking the role formally.

This is what No 10 said about Rosenfield in a briefing for journalists.

Dan joins No10 from Hakluyt, a strategic advisory firm for businesses and investors, where he has been global head of corporate clients and head of the UK business since 2016. Prior to Hakluyt, he was a managing director, investment banking at Bank of America. He was previously an official in the UK Treasury for over a decade, including four years as principal private secretary to Chancellors Alistair Darling and George Osborne, from 2007 to 2011. Dan is also chairman of World Jewish Relief, the British Jewish community’s humanitarian agency.

And Conor Burns, the Conservative MP for Bournemouth East, has also criticised the Bournemouth decision.

The Conservative MP Tobias Ellwood represents Bournemouth East, which is in tier 2. He says he will not be backing the government in the vote on the new measures.

From Damian Green, the Conservative MP for Ashford in Kent

From the Times’ Chris Smyth

Tax increases and spending cuts totalling £40bn will be needed to balance the books as a combination of weak growth and pressure on the NHS and welfare budgets leads to worse than expected public finances in the coming years, the Institute for Fiscal Studies has said. My colleague Larry Elliott has the story here.

Stephen Brady, the leader of Hull city council, has defended the decision to put his city in tier 3. Earlier this month it had the highest coronavirus rate in England, at 785 cases per 100,000, but that has now fallen to 530 cases per 100,000.

Brady said:

Tier 3 is not where anyone wants to be but, with our infection rates still very high, it is what we expected and it’s the right place for Hull to be at this time.

This is from Sacha Lord, Greater Manchester’s night-time economy adviser.

“Lockdown must not become limbo,” says Dan Jarvis, the Labour mayor for the Sheffield city region. He says he wants the region to come out of tier 3 “as a matter of urgency”.

I welcome government plans to review our tier arrangements every two weeks, because every extra day we are under restrictions could be the difference between a business surviving the pandemic or going under. It is now essential we get a roadmap to get us out of tier 3 as a matter of urgency.

Boris Johnson will be joined by Prof Chris Whitty, England’s chief medical officer, and Sir Patrick Vallance, the chief scientific adviser, at his No 10 press conference this afternoon.

In the Commons Dominic Raab, the foreign secretary, is now making a statement on development spending. He has just told MPs that the government will legislate to allow it to abandon the 0.7% target for overseas aid spending as a share of national income. But he insisted that the UK was still determined to remain an international leader in this field.

In a joint statement on Leicester being placed in tier 3, the three local Labour MPs, Liz Kendall, Jonathan Ashworth and Claudia Webbe, issued a joint statement saying:

This has already been an unbelievably tough year, and the news that Leicester will go into tier 3 – on top of the 150 days of our extra lockdown – is extremely difficult to hear.

The government must now spell out how we can get out of tier 3, and the measures they will use to review Leicester’s position, to give people hope their sacrifices will make a difference.