UK coronavirus: Sunak warns of 'unprecedented challenge' as questions persist over economy and care homes – as it happened

• The lockdown could shrink GDP by 35% in the second quarter of the year but bounce back quickly and unemployment could rise by 2 million, according to the results of a coronavirus scenario published by the Office for Budget Responsibility. This is not a forecast nor an official government prediction, but a scenario illustrating the possible effects on the economy and public finances of a three-month shutdown and the government’s policy responses.
• The UK’s hospital death toll surpassed 12,000 as a further 778 hospital deaths were recorded, taking the total to 12,107.
• Actual coronavirus-related deaths could be 15% higher than daily government figures suggest, said an ONS report. Nick Stripe, head of health analysis and life events at the ONS said: “The latest comparable data for deaths involving Covid-19 with a date of death up to 3 April, show there were 6,235 deaths in England and Wales. When looking at data for England, this is 15% higher than the NHS numbers as they include all mentions of Covid-19 on the death certificate, including suspected Covid-19, as well as deaths in the community.”
• Separately, the latest weekly ONS figures suggest 10% of coronavirus deaths are occurring outside a hospital setting. Of those, more than half were in care homes, with the rest in private homes and hospices. The figures cover the week ending 3 April, making them almost two weeks out of date. With the true picture likely much worse, Labour is calling for daily publication of figures showing coronavirus-related deaths in care homes.
• Two of the UK’s largest care home providers recorded deaths of 521 residents in recent weeks, fuelling claims the official figures are understating the prevalence of coronavirus in care homes. Sir David Behan, non-executive director of HC-One, said Covid-19 was present in two-thirds (232) of its care homes with 2,447 suspected cases and 311 residents had died along with one member of staff. MHA, another leading provider, said Covid-19 had affected about half of its homes and was linked to 210 deaths.

Many thanks to everyone who got in touch with tips and suggestions – your input is invaluable. That’s it from us here on the UK side, but if you’d like to you can continue following the Guardian’s worldwide coronavirus coverage over on our global live blog.

14 Apr 202013.44 EDT

Rishi Sunak's press conference - Summary and analysis

Andrew Sparrow

Of all the ministers who have been given the opportunity to appear at the government’s daily coronavirus press conference, Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, has probably made the best impression. Of course being able to announce almost limitless government spending does help a lot, but he is less evasive than most of his colleagues and generally does a better job than the rest of them at sounding positive yet not deluded.

He managed it again today, even though some of his assumptions are verging on the heroic. The OBR does broadly back his claim that the economy will be able to recover quickly. But his suggestion that Boris Johnson’s open-chequebook “levelling up” agenda will be able to survive intact after the national debt has risen much higher seems optimistic, to put it politely. And perhaps his boldest claim is that this is no inherent tension between safeguarding the economy and protecting lives. That argument might look robust now, but it is likely to appear more tenuous in the months to come.

Here are the main points.

• Sunak insisted that the UK economy would be able to recover “quickly and strongly” after the coronavirus crisis was over. He made the claim in response to a report from the Office for Budget Responsibility suggesting a three-month lockdown, followed by three more months of partial lockdown measures, could shrink GDP by 35% and put unemployment up by more than 2m. Sunak insisted that this was not a firm forecast, but he accepted that the economic impact of the crisis would be significant. However, he claimed recovery could come very quickly. He said:

This is going to be hard, our economy’s going to take a significant hit and as I’ve said before that’s not an abstract thing, people are going to feel that in their jobs and in their household incomes ...

Yes it will be difficult in the short term. I’m happy to be honest about that with people. I think the measures we’ve put in place will help and then as we get through this it will mean that we can recover quickly and strongly and get our lives and economy back to normal.

Improbable as this claim may seem, it is in line with the OBR analysis, which envisages that says that “real GDP falls 35% in the second quarter, but bounces back quickly”.

• Sunak rejected suggestions that the coronavirus crisis, and the enormous increase in government borrowing and debt that it will generate, would prevent the government from pursuing its “levelling up” agenda (which prioritises infrastructure spending, particularly in the north). When this suggestion was put to him, he replied:

Once we get through this obviously we will have to take stock of public finances and the economy and make the right decisions at that point and I’ve talked before about doing whatever we need to to right the ship at that point.

But what I would say is we remain very committed to the agenda that we set out before which was about levelling up and spreading opportunity around this country, and indeed I believe this can still be a critical part of how we get back to normal here.

• He rejected claims that there was an inherent contradiction between protecting the economy and saving lives. In his opening remarks he said:

The third point I want to make is this: right now, the single most important thing we can do for the health of our economy is to protect the health of our people.

It’s not a case of choosing between the economy and public health – common sense tells us that doing so would be self-defeating.

At a time when we are seeing hundreds of people dying every day from this terrible disease, the absolute priority must be to focus all of our resources …

… not just of the state, but of businesses, and of all of you at home as well, in a collective national effort to beat this virus.

• He refused to back a call for the government to scrap the pensions “triple lock” as a result of the crisis, to free up money to help young workers who are particularly likely to be disadvantaged. The Social Market Foundation, a centrist thinktank, has proposed this idea. Asked if he agreed, Sunak said he would not write his budget now. But he said he wanted to provide opportunity for people, whatever age they were.

• He said the government was working with the ONS to speed up the publication of information about the deaths of people with coronavirus in care homes.

• He said that the coronavirus job retention scheme is due to open on 20 April.

• He said he would consider making some of the coronavirus business loans 100% guaranteed by the government, not just 80% guaranteed. George Osborne, a former Tory chancellor, has proposed this idea. (See 5.40pm.)

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14 Apr 202013.05 EDT

Libby Brooks

Following the UK government’s insistence that the supply of PPE is a “four nations strategy”, and that no nation was being prioritised over any other, Donald Macaskill, head of the umbrella body Scottish Care, insisted on Tuesday afternoon that he had “good evidence” of care homes in Scotland being told by UK manufacturers that they cannot supply north of the border. He said:

In practice we have a number of organisations telling us that their traditional producers are no longer supplying to Scotland because they are supplying the NHS, which of course goes into the four nations supply, but it effectively means they are disadvantaged because it’s not coming to social care.

Describing the situation as “a real dog’s breakfast”, Mackaskill said that care homes were reporting that some firms would only deliver to the NHS, while others had hiked their prices to deliver to Scotland.

Meanwhile, the Scottish health secretary Jeane Freeman tweeted that she had managed to speak directly to her UK counterpart Matt Hancock and had been reassured:

14 Apr 202013.03 EDT

Steven Morris

The Welsh government has been heavily criticised for still only being able to carry out 1,300 Covid-19 tests a day.

The Tory shadow health minister in Wales, Angela Burns, said:

The testing regime is overly complicated, drowning in bureaucracy, and fragmented.

At the end of last month the health minister, Vaughan Gething, said that within two to three weeks from then Wales would be carrying out 5,000 tests a day.

At a press conference on Tuesday, Gething expressed frustration that not all its current testing capacity was being taken up and called for more frontline staff to be referred.

But the Gwynedd council leader, Dyfrig Siencyn, said:

Local authorities have been clamouring for an efficient full testing regime for our frontline staff over the last three weeks.

Instead, what we have is a complex shambolic system which involves reference to the health boards, Public Health Wales, Data Cymru and local authorities. There is a long chain of bureaucracy, complexities and layers before results reach us.

Furthermore, we find that many of the names put forward for testing are ineligible for reasons difficult to understand.

The speaker, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, has outlined plans for a virtual Commons to return on 21 April, including enabling MPs to partake remotely in PMQs, urgent questions and statements via live video link.

Once this is established to be working well, the model could be extended to debates on motions and legislation, and a system of remote voting in divisions of the House, he added.

The speaker has approved the “draft operating model” and it is now with the government and main opposition parties for review. A virtual meeting of the procedure committee will consider the model on 15 April.

If the House of Commons Commission gives its approval on 16 April, it would be for the Leader of the House, following consultation with the parties, to put forward motions setting out any temporary arrangements for the House to consider on 21 April.

14 Apr 202012.59 EDT

Owen Bowcott

Disability campaigners who fear they could be denied life-saving treatment if they contract coronavirus are threatening the government with legal action.

Letters have been sent to the health secretary, Matt Hancock, and NHS England calling on them to publish guidance on how doctors assign priority to patients during the pandemic – or else face a courtroom challenge.

Disability campaigners are worried, according to the law firm Rook Irwin Sweeney, that if they contract the virus they may be deemed less likely to benefit from life-saving treatment so instead would receive only palliative care.

The failure to produce guidance on how decisions will be made is discriminatory and amounts to a breach of their clients’ human rights, it is alleged. The letter said legal action will be launched next week if there is no satisfactory response.

Among the campaigners are Doug Paulley, 42, a stroke-sufferer who lives in in a care home in Wetherby, West Yorkshire. He has already won a landmark case at the supreme court on the rights of wheelchair users on buses. He said:

This is an extremely worrying time for me, as it is for all disabled people. I understand that difficult decisions will have to be made, but at the moment we just don’t know how doctors are going to prioritise life-saving treatment for coronavirus. I’m concerned that without proper guidance, doctors may decide not to treat me, simply because of my impairments.

I feel strongly that I should be given the same chance as anyone else - all I’m asking for is some reassurance that my life will be valued as much as the next person.

Anne-Marie Irwin, a partner at Rook Irwin Sweeney who acts for the campaigners, said:

My clients are not asking for special treatment, and they know how hard NHS staff up and down the country are working to save lives. Having said that, they are entitled to know how they will be treated if they contract coronavirus and need life-saving treatment.

Our clients consider it irrational that national guidance has not been put in place, and that the government is failing in its duty to protect their human rights. They also believe that clear guidance is crucial to assist the doctors who will have to make these difficult decisions.

The Department of Health and Social Care has been asked for comment.

Sir Simon Stevens, the chief executive of NHS England, self-isolated for more than week after experiencing coronavirus symptoms, the BBC’s health editor Hugh Pym reports.

In Pym’s tweet, he says Stevens “has revealed he has had coronavirus”, indicating he might have been tested, though this remains unclear.

Sunak wraps up the press conference by thanking the public for continuing to follow the social distancing guidelines, particularly over the sunny weekend.

I’ll post a summary of the press conference soon.

Q: One thing that might make the economy even worse is a no-deal Brexit. So why is that still an option?

Sunak says the UK has left the EU with a deal. The government is committed to getting a trade deal with the EU. He says Michel Barnier and David Frost have discussed how the talks can continue. He is confident that those talks can reach a conclusion.

Q: If universal credit really an adequate safety net? Are you open to a universal basic income?

Sunak says he does not think that is the right response. He thinks universal credit is working well. The DWP is under pressure, but given the circumstances it is processing claims effectively. He says the government has put extra money into the welfare system too.

Q: The Nightingale hospital in London is largely empty. Why cannot it be used for people from care homes?

Doyle says she does know why care home patients have not been admitted. But there is no reason why they should not be admitted, she says.

Powis says the NHS has made sure it has extra capacity so that, if clinicians want to sent patients to hospital, they can.

Q: How are you going to find the money to help address the deficit this will create?

Sunak says he cannot write tax policy now. It will cost a lot. But the best way out is just to grow the economy, he says. He says if that were to happen, the long-term impact on the public finances would be reduced.

Q: Can you name things you wish we had done differently? Or has the UK response been without fault?

Doyle says her colleagues have been working since mid-January, sometimes seven days a week. They have learned so much. She says she wishes they knew what they now know then. It would have been wonderful to know when the virus was first around.

She says they have so much to learn.

Yes, of course we could do things better. That’s why we keep talking to our neighbours.

She says she is humble about this.

Powis says as a doctor he is always looking back to see what you can learn. But he says it is too early to say what the main lessons are. He says the answers at this end of this will be different from what they would be today. But it will be important to learn lessons, he says.

Sunak says they have been faced with an unprecedented challenge. Of course there will be things to learn, he says.

Q: Will you consider the proposal from George Osborne [see 3.40pm] for the Treasury to offer 100% loan guarantees in some circumstances?

Sunak says he will look at this. But he says it would not be him taking 100% of the risk. It would be the taxpayer. Banks would have no incentives to scrutinise loans, he says. But he says Germany and Switzerland have adopted this approach. He says he will consider it.

• Sunak says he will consider making some of the coronavirus business loans 100% guaranteed by the government, not just 80% guaranteed.

Q: Isn’t is just unfair to produce a graph comparing UK figures, without care home deaths, to French figures, with care home deaths? (See 5.10pm.) On a like by like basis, the UK would be ahead of France, wouldn’t it?

Doyle accepts it would be better if the figures did compare like with like. The government is always ready to learn, she says.