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- Government faces Tory backbench revolt over plan B Covid measures
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The Office for National Statistics has published its latest weekly Covid infection survey. This is seen as one of the most accurate indicators of the prevalence of coronavirus, because it is based on a survey. Here are the figures. They cover the week ending Wednesday 1 December (except for Scotland, where they cover the week ending Thursday 2 December.
Covid levels are going down in Scotland, the ONS says, but elsewhere the trend is stable, or unclear.
The government plans to radically alter local government in England, replacing it with a single-tier mayoral-style system, according to a draft of the government’s levelling up white paper seen by the Independent.
The document – marked “official sensitive” – states the government is setting out a “new devolution framework for England” based on a model of a directly elected leader “over a well-defined economic geography”.
The document lays out 13 missions with which to “anchor” the agenda, which the prime minister has described as the central purpose of his administration, and all come with a 2030 deadline …
The missions include targets from narrowing gaps in life expectancy to an undefined target to reduce the numbers of people renting “non-decent homes”.
