Labour just can’t get enough of their previous political staff handed supposedly neutral civil service jobs. In what is now becoming a major scandal, ministers are failing to justify the provision of mass-Labour donor Waheed Alli with a Downing Street pass and Labour aides are entering the civil service in droves. It’s not just Sue Gray bringing on her loyalists…

Wes Streeting’s political press officer Joe Davies, employed by the Labour Party in the four months to election, was handed a civil service media relations role this month. DHSC deploys the usual line when asked about this parachute job by Guido: “The department does not comment on individual personnel matters. Any appointments are made in line with the civil service rules on recruitment.” The department has not denied that the job was given without interview. Normally ministers’ civil service press teams are composed of impartial civil servants…

If the job wasn’t advertised externally, what exception was used? Who signed off on the exception? Did Streeting make a declaration of interest? 

Starmer’s line when asked at his ‘State of the Nation’ speech was that “most of these allegations are coming from the very people who dragged the country down in the first place.” Which is complete nonsense as it’s the press, not Tories, digging out these appointments…

Guido is told that, while donor Ian Corfield’s crony civil service appointment won’t be going ahead, Jess Sargeant’s position in the Propriety and Constitution Group hasn’t changed. There’s no stopping this train…

The Department of Health and Social Care put out a message to civil servants on the internal intranet yesterday in relation to the riots sweeping the streets of the UK. They acknowledge the “distressing” scenes, offering “support” to those “impacted”. “Mental-health first aiders” and “wellbeing coaches” are among the many services provided to those distressed by events. If they aren’t too busy shirking from home, gardening or gaming…

Still, the message of support wasn’t well received. Several senior advisers from the department have launched a blistering attack on the “disappoint[ing]” response, slamming it for its failure to “call a spade a spade” and call out the “root cause” of the riots.

Guido has contacted DHSC for a comment. It appears that the countless forms of support from the blob for these delicate pen-pushers just aren’t enough…

UPDATE I: A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said:

“We are providing support services to our staff, who are working alongside NHS staff to respond to the violent, thuggish behaviour we’ve seen over the last week.”

UPDATE II: The comments section has now been closed. The department clearly couldn’t handle all the complaints…

Last night Westminster fell over themselves to make the obvious jokes after Boris used the briefing to announce a new vaccine bottling plant at Barnard Castle. GlaxoSmithKline will use the new site to support the manufacturing of 60 million Novavax vaccines down the road in Stockton, preparing vials of the doses and packaging them. Guido hears the announcement was far from a happy coincidence…

Last week a government source got in touch regarding the impending news; delighted at the thought of a vaccine plant in Barnard Castle being announced on the anniversary of Cummings’s fateful journey up to the area. A civil service government source has since described the announcement to Guido as “closure”. Turns out the Department of Health might not be quite the smoking ruin Cummings described…

This morning Hancock was on TV attacking people for getting Coronavirus tests when they were not eligible. He told Sky News:

“In the last couple of weeks we’ve seen an increase in demand, including an increase in demand from people who are not eligible for tests, people who don’t have symptoms. We’ve seen an increase of about 25% of people who are coming forward that don’t have symptoms and aren’t eligible.”

Hancock’s instructions to the public in July, however, saw the Health Secretary tell the Commons that if people are in doubt they should get a test. Not only if they have symptoms…

“The main cause of the gap is people who are asymptomatic and therefore do not know they have the virus and do not come forward for testing. We are going to ramp up our communications to make clear that, if in doubt and if people think they might have the symptoms, they should come forward and get a test. We are also going to ramp up our asymptomatic testing of high-risk groups, which he and I have had exchanges about before.”

Was Hancock’s advice wrong then or is it wrong now? The public will be getting pretty sick of the Department of Health’s cock-ups being the responsibility of anyone other than Hancock.

UPDATE: A government source tells Guido “The guidance is clear. If you think you have symptoms you should get a test. Today’s message is no different to that.” Apparently people in doubt about whether they have symptoms should still get a test…

Yesterday the Government announced it had reached the 200,000 testing capacity target a day early, a commendable feat. This includes 160,000 diagnostic (do you have it) tests and 40,000 antibody (have you had it) tests a day. What is less commendable, however, is that for ten days running, the Health Department has said the number of people being tested is ‘unavailable’. The last day the Government published a ‘people tested’ number was 21 May…

While yesterday Robert Jenrick said that 115,725 tests had been carried out, there was no number for how many people had multiple tests. Ten days ago Public Health England admitted that for many diagnostic tests two swabs are taken, one from the mouth and one from the nose. These are being counted as two tests rather than one, reportedly inflating the test numbers by more than 20% above the number of people being tested. The Health Department tells Guido that the numbers for people tested have been “temporarily paused”:

“Reporting on the number of people tested has been temporarily paused to ensure consistent reporting across all pillars. This is due to a small percentage of cases where the same person has had more than one test or tested positive more than once for COVID-19 in Pillar 2. Corrections will be made to any figures if they have subsequently been found to have an error.”

Temporarily paused for eleven days so far. How long does it take to ‘ensure consistent reporting’?