Early evening summary Boris Johnson’s attempt to ignore questions about a No 10 party held during lockdown by urging people to wait for the outcome of the ongoing inquiry into “partygate” has failed to quell growing uproar about his conduct in his party, and in the country at large. While relatively few Tory MPs have criticised him in public, in private their mood is reportedly more unforgiving and Douglas Ross, the Scottish Conservative leader, has said that if Johnson did attend the lockdown-busting event (as witnesses say he did), while ministers were telling the public that gatherings of this kind were banned, that would be “utterly despicable”. (See 4.38pm.) Ross said Johnson must resign if he has broken the rules. Two polls suggest more than half of voters have already decided Johnson should quit. (See 3.57pm.) Michael Ellis, a junior Cabinet Office minister, spent almost 90 minutes in the Commons ducking questions about whether Johnson had attended the party, and having to listen to heartrending accounts of the anger felt by constituents who missed key moments with loved ones while No 10 staff were partying. (See 2.22pm.) There will now be intense focus on tomorrow’s PMQs, where Johnson’s performance may determine whether his MPs decide to push for his removal. The Metropolitan police have been accused of “deferring to the powerful” by not investigating Downing Street parties held in apparent breach of lockdown rules. Government MPs have voted down a Labour motion calling for VAT on household energy bills to be cut. In the past government MPs have often abstained on Labour motions they do not support, because normally opposition day motions are non-binding, but they felt obliged to vote down this one because the wording would have set aside time for the Commons to pass a bill cutting VAT. Only one Tory, Anne Marie Morris, voted with Labour. Labour has posted this on Twitter. Restrictions on large outdoor events in Scotland will be lifted from next Monday, Nicola Sturgeon has confirmed, as she told Holyrood that the latest Covid infection data indicated “we may be starting to turn a corner”. That’s all from me for today. But our coronavirus coverage continues on our global live blog. It’s here. The Conservative former minister Johnny Mercer has joined the list of Tory MPs speaking out about the No 10 party. (See 5.42pm.) He says it is “humiliating” for his party. John Caudwell, a major Tory donor, has told the BBC that Boris Johnson should “sort it out ... or step aside and let someone else sort it out so that the Tories aren’t wiped out at the next election”. And here the BBC’s Carolyn Quinn quoting a Tory MP critical of Boris Johnson who does not want to go on the record. George Grylls from the Times has got a Twitter thread starting here naming seven Tory MPs who have publicly expressed concern about the No 10 party. They are: Philip Davies, Robbie Moore, Laura Farris, Philip Dunne, Douglas Ross, Christopher Chope and Bob Blackman. Tory MPs will consider no confidence vote if PM has broken law, Scottish Conservative leader says Douglas Ross, the Scottish Tory leader, has said backbench Tory MPs will discuss tabling a no confidence vote in Boris Johnson with the party’s 1922 committee if he is found to have broken the law by attending the No 10 party. Speaking to STV, Ross said he was “furious” that while other Britons were unable to meet dying or hospitalised relatives “people in 10 Downing Street were enjoying the sunshine out the back of No 10 and quaffing the booze”. Ross, the Tory MP for Moray as well as an MSP, said he could no longer support the prime minister if he was found to have attended the event and then failed to resign voluntarily. Asked whether he would himself send a letter to the 1922 Committee to trigger a leadership election, Ross did not confirm he had done so but said: It doesn’t trigger an election, it triggers a vote in whether you have confidence or not. These are discussions I know that colleagues will be having in Westminster. I would not in any way support the prime minister if he broke the law and attended that party. UK may be closer than other countries to stage where Covid no longer pandemic, says expert Mass vaccination and past waves of infection mean the UK may be closer than other countries to emerging from the coronavirus pandemic and Covid becoming a more manageable disease, a leading public health expert has said. Prof David Heymann, a distinguished fellow in global public health at Chatham House and former chair of the UK Health Protection Agency, said immunity in the UK seemed to have reached a sufficient level to prevent widespread severe illness from Covid, though he stressed it was impossible to rule out more virulent variants in the future. “Probably in the UK, it’s the closest to any country of being out of the pandemic, if it isn’t already out of the pandemic, and having the disease as endemic as the other four coronaviruses,” Heymann told a Chatham House webinar today. The other coronaviruses he referred to have been around for centuries and are among the many viruses that cause common colds. He went on: Countries are now seeing population immunity build up. That means immunity against serious illness and death after one is vaccinated, or after reinfection if one has had the illness before, and that population immunity seems to be keeping the virus and its variants at bay. The Office for National Statistics estimates that about 95% of the UK population have antibodies to Covid from vaccination, infection or both. Antibodies bind to the virus and disable it before it infects cells. Another arm of the immune system deploys T cells which destroy infected cells and limit the spread of infection. Immunity is “keeping the virus at bay, and it’s now functioning more like an endemic coronavirus than one that is pandemic,” Heymann said. In fact, the people who are getting seriously ill are those who have not had previous infection or vaccination. And if you look in the intensive care units, you’ll see that unfortunately, the majority of those people are not vaccinated. But Heymann warned that we are not out of the woods. We should expect further resurgences of the virus, he said, adding that it is impossible to predict where or when new variants will emerge and how virulent and transmissible they will be. “We don’t know what’s in store for us,” he said. “It could certainly be a bumpy road.” UK records 120,821 new cases and 379 further deaths The UK has recorded 120,821 new Covid cases, today’s government dashboard update says. That means the total number of new cases over the past week is now down, by 13.1%, on the total for the previous week. Until now the week-on-week total has been rising. But deaths are up 80.8% week on week, with another 379 recorded today. Scottish Tory leader says PM must resign if he broke lockdown rules because such hypocrisy "utterly despicable" Douglas Ross, the Scottish Conservative leader, has said that Boris Johnson will have to resign if it has found that he broke lockdown regulations by attending the party in Downing Street on 20 May last year. In what is probably the most significant Tory criticism of Johnson so far, Ross – who still sits as an MP, despite also being a member of the Scottish parliament – told Sky News that Johnson should say now whether or not he attended the event, instead of dodging the question and saying it is a matter for the Sue Gray inquiry (as he has been doing). Ross said: It is not pre-judging Sue Gray’s inquiry for the prime minister to come forward and say if he was at the party or not. That’s a crucial question. It won’t in any way undermine Sue Gray’s investigation. It will let the public know, right now, if he was there or not. It’s a crucial question that shouldn’t have to wait until prime minister’s questions tomorrow. We should hear the answer right now. Ross said that, if Johnson and his staff did break the lockdown rules being followed by everyone else, such hypocrisy would be despicable. He said: I can’t understand why [the PM would not answer the question now]. If there’s nothing to hide here, if there’s no issue, then just answer the question. And if there is, then that is an acceptance that he himself breached the guidance that his government were putting in place. This is the guidance that stopped people going to family members’ funerals. It stopped people grieving together. It meant that doctors and nurses were working flat out to get this virus under control and people across the country were following some of the strictest guidance we’ve ever seen. And if the prime minister and others within No 10 breached that guidance, while earlier that afternoon a cabinet minister had told people what they were expected to do, yet out the back in No 10 people were enjoying the sunshine in the garden - I think that is utterly despicable. Asked if Johnson could stay on as prime minister if he were found to have broken the law, Ross said: No, absolutely not. This is a law that he and his government put in place. This is a law ... that constituents up and down the country have suffered as a result of. They have been fined, they have been punished, for breaking the rules that the UK government put in place. And if the UK government and the prime minister have broken those rules, then they must be punished to. Johnson is significantly more unpopular in Scotland than he is in England and in one respect distancing yourself from him is an essential survival mechanism for a Scottish Conservative leader. Ross resigned from government in May last year because he was unwilling to defend Dominic Cummings over the Barnard Castle trip, and this was a factor that bolstered his credibility when there was vacancy for the Scottish Conservative leadership. But it is not just Scottish voters who are angry about No 10 partying, and Ross’s willingness to speak out might encourage some of his parliamentary colleagues to break cover too. Two polls suggests more than half of voters think Johnson should resign following latest No 10 party allegations YouGov has also released some snap polling suggesting a majority of people (56%) think Boris Johnson should resign. YouGov’s Patrick English has just told Sky News that this is the first time in YouGov polling that more than half of people have said he should quit. That makes two polls this afternoon suggesting more than half of voters think Johnson should resign. (See 3.40pm.) YouGov also found that more than half of people say they are following partygate stories either very or fairly closely. Nicola Sturgeon says that the latest revelations about Downing Street’s “serial” rule-breaking are “deeply angering and upsetting” to people who had made significant personal sacrifices to follow government guidance. Asked at her weekly Covid statement about the impact of the latest reports on Scotland’s public health messages, Sturgeon said: People across the country are aghast at the revelations about Downing Street’s conduct. It appears not just one isolated breach but serial breaches of guidance that people were following through painful sacrifices through this pandemic, and a prime minister who apparently is not being truthful about his knowledge of these matters. I don’t think it will surprise anybody to hear my view that the office of prime minister would be greatly enhanced by Boris Johnson’s departure from it. But more importantly, I think at this moment in time, the interests of the United Kingdom would be enhanced by that as well. Savanta ComRes has released the results of a snap poll suggesting that, by a margin of almost three to one, voters do not see Boris Johnson as an asset for his party. Even among people who voted Conservative in 2019 opinion is evenly divided as to whether or not he is an asset. And two-thirds of voters (66%) think he should resign over the latest revelations, the poll suggests. This is a 12-point increase on the percentage of people saying Johnson should resign when Savanta ComRes asked the same question last month, in the light of the original partygate revelations. The poll also suggests that 77% of people think the Metropolitan police should investigate the latest revelations and and that 36% of people say they would be less likely to follow government Covid rules as a result of this story. Catch-up tuition programme for pupils set to miss its targets, latest figures suggest The government has published figures that show take-up of its flagship national tutoring programme is falling woefully short of targets, putting catch-up plans for the nation’s children in doubt. Schools appear to be rejecting the government’s tuition scheme run by the Dutch multi-national Randstad in favour of their own in-house tuition provision. Just 10% of this year’s target for the Randstad-led scheme has been reached so far, while tuition provided by academic mentors - a separate strand of the NTP also run by Randstad - is at 8% of target. Last term, an estimated 230,000 school-led tutoring packages got under way to help children with the greatest learning loss. Just 52,000 were provided by the Randstad scheme, which has a target of 524,000 this academic year, plus 20,000 through the academic mentoring scheme, which has a target of 252,000. One source described the results as “scandalously poor”. Nick Brook, deputy general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, said schools had found accessing tuition support through the NTP confusing and difficult. He explained: Unfortunately, the story behind these numbers is that there are still many children that would benefit from tutoring support who are not getting it. The government’s tutoring revolution risks stalling unless more is done to ensure that high quality easy-to-access tutoring support is available to every school, for all pupils that need it, in every single part of the country. Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, added: The government’s theory behind aiming to reduce the workload on schools may have been good but its decision to use an expensive commercial partner has backfired. Schools minister Robin Walker said: “We know there is still work to do, but its hugely encouraging to see so many students from all backgrounds have been directly reached through the government’s tutoring programme and I encourage all schools to take advantage of it.” One in 12 NHS staff in Wales are off sick with Covid-19 or are self-isolating, the Welsh health minister, Eluned Morgan, has said. She said 8% were off – around 10,000 people - the highest number since April 2020 and there are more than 1,000 Covid patients in hospitals in Wales. Morgan said Wales remained in a grip of a “huge coronavirus wave” that had not yet reached its peak, despite statistics seeming to show a levelling off in the last few days. The minister also conceded a shortage of social care workers meant that 1,000 people were in hospital waiting to be discharged but could not because of a lack of support. Asked if restrictions on the number of people able to attend a sporting match may be lifted in time for the rugby Six Nations, Morgan said that “we are keen to dismantle any restrictions as soon as we possibly can” and the matter was already being discussed in cabinet. The Welsh first minister, Mark Drakeford, is resisting pressure for large crowds to be allowed back into football and rugby grounds. Drakeford’s Labour government has been criticised for its restrictions, which include a limit of 50 people meeting at an outdoor event. At first minister’s questions, the Tory leader, Andrew RT Davies, said Wales had become an “outlier” by maintaining such restrictions and called for a clear roadmap out. Drakeford said that Wales remained “in the teeth of the Omicron storm”, adding: We have the latest modelling - it shows that the peak of the on wave is yet to be reached in Wales, we may be 10 days away form the peak. Every week we take advice from the chief medical officer and others. When they tell us it is safe to lift restrictions, we are eager to do that. We are not in that situation yet.