UK Covid: Javid tells MPs there are 336 Omicron cases in multiple regions – as it happened

• Sajid Javid, the health secretary, has told MPs that there are now 336 confirmed Omicron cases in the UK and that there is there is “community transmission across multiple regions of England”. (See 5.34pm and 5.35pm.)

• Theresa May, the former prime minister, has joined the ranks of Conservative MPs expressing concern about the prospect of further Covid restrictions being introduced. (See 6.01pm.)

• Downing Street has denied that a party took place in Downing Street last December and said it was a “statement of fact” that no Covid rules were broken. (See 2pm.)

For further coronavirus coverage, do read our global live blog.

The Javid statement is now over. The Independent’s John Rentoul argued on Twitter earlier that MPs were missing an obvious line of attack.

Asked by Labour’s Angela Eagle how much more he would be able to tell MPs in the update next week about the threat posed by Omicron, Javid said there would still be “many unanswered questions” at that point. He said:

As each day goes by we are getting a little bit more information, but I do think by next week with the samples that have arrived at Porton Down and other labs across the world we will have more information.

I will just caveat that by saying I can’t make any guarantee about how much information that we will have. I am sure there will still be many unanswered questions at that point.

Andrew Bridgen (Con) said that he was glad to hear that no Omicron cases are in hospital (see 6.13pm) and that he thought Theresa May was right to say virus variants become more transmissible but less harmful. He said he hoped this meant all restrictions would be lifted next week.

Javid replied: “Let’s wait and see what next week brings.”

Dominic Cummings, the PM’s former chief adviser, who is now one of his fiercest critics, says that No 10 is now lying about the December party last year.

He also suggests the government is being complacent about Omicron.

Kate Osamor (Lab) says the Nigerial high commissioner has described his country’s inclusion on the red list as “travel apartheid”. She says Delta seems to lead to more serious illness, but European countries with high numbers of Delta cases are not on the red list. She urges the government to adopt an international approach, not a “discriminatory approach”.

Javid says southern Africa is the epicentre of Omicron. He says at least 21 Omicron cases in the UK are linked to Nigeria. (See 5.43pm.)

Sir Desmond Swayne (Con) asks how many of the infected cases are ill.

Javid say, of the the 336 cases, some may be asymptomatic, some are ill, but none are in hospital, as far as he knows.

Sir Graham Brady, chair of the Conservative backbench 1922 Committee, says the travel industry has been “devastated” by uncertainty and constantly changing Covid rules. He asks what criteria will be used by ministers to decide when the latest rules should be lifted.

Javid says next week’s update will be an important moment.

Mark Harper (Con) asks for an assurance that MPs will be recalled during the Christmas recess if the government needs to implement further measures during the holiday period.

Javid says people would expect the government to take action over the recess if it has to. He says he will take back to colleagues the point Harper makes about parliament being recalled.

In the Commons Theresa May, the former prime minister, said it would be a mistake for the government to respond to every new variant by closing down the economy.

The early indications of Omicron are that it is more transmissible but potentially leads to less serious illness than other variants. I understand that would be the normal progress of a virus. Variants will continue to appear year after year.

When is the government going to accept that learning to live with Covid, which we will all have to do, means we will almost certainly have an annual vaccine and that we cannot respond to new variants by stopping and starting sectors of our economy which leads to businesses going under and jobs being lost?

Javid replied:

In terms of the severity of this, I think we shouldn’t jump to any conclusion, we just don’t have enough data.

It is not going away ... for many, many years and perhaps it will lead to annual vaccinations, but we have to find ways to continue with life as normal.

In response to Streeting’s point about the No 10 party, Javid said the rules of course apply to everyone.

Wes Streeting, the new shadow health secretary, is responding for Labour.

He says, like his predecessor, Jonathan Ashworth, he wants to adopt a constructive approach.

He says he is glad the government has implemented the pre-flight tests that Labour was calling for.

He asks what is being done to tackle vaccine hesitancy.

He says sick pay should be more generous for people who have to isolate.

And he ends with a reference to the No 10 party last December. People need to have confidence in people setting the rules. He says two residents in Ilford (Streeting is MP for Ilford North) were punished for holding an indoor gathering against lockdown rules on 18 December last year. “And rightly so,” Streeting says. So will the government come clean about what happened, or is it one rule for them, and one rule for everyone else?

Javid says new analysis suggests that the gap between being infected and being infectious may be shorted for Omicron than it is for the Delta variant.

We are learning more about this new variant all the time.

Recent analysis from the UK Health Security Agency suggests that the window between infection and infectiousness may be shorter for the Omicron variant than for the Delta variant, but we don’t yet have a complete picture of whether Omicron causes more severe disease or indeed how it interacts with the vaccines.

We can’t say for certain at this point whether Omicron has the potential to knock us off our road to recovery.

We are leaving nothing to chance. Our strategy is to buy ourselves times and to strengthen our defences while our world-leading scientists assess this new variant and what it means for our fight against Covid-19.

He is now summing up the measures announced over the weekend.

He says Nigeria has been added to the red list. He says at least 21 of the Omicron cases in England are linked to Nigeria. And he says there are strong travel links between Nigeria and South Africa.

Analysis from UKHSA [Health Security Agency] shows that at least 21 Omicron cases in England alone are linked to travel from Nigeria, and there’s a strong indication that Omicron is present there. Nigeria also has very strong travel links with South Africa.

He says more hotel rooms are being set aside for arrivals how have to go through hotel quarantine.

I know that there has been a spike in demand for these facilities due to the rapid expansion of the red list and that some people have experienced issues returning home.

However, we are ramping up this capacity as quickly as possible. We’ve already brought several new hotels on board in the past few days and we expect to double the number of rooms that are available this week.

And because the gap between infection and infectiousness may be shorter with Omicron, pre-flight testing is being introduced for arrivals.

He says these measures will be kept under review and MPs will get an update next week.

And he confirms that the vaccination programme is being beefed up.

Javid says the new figures mean there is “community transmission across multiple regions of England”.

The Omicron variant is continuing to spread here and around the world. According to the latest data there are now 261 confirmed cases in England, 71 in Scotland and four in Wales, bringing the total number of confirmed cases across the UK to 336. This includes cases with no links to international travel. So, we can conclude that there is now community transmission across multiple regions of England.

Sajid Javid, the health secretary, is making a Commons statement on Covid.

He says there are now 261 confirmed Omicron cases in England, 71 in Scotland, and four in Wales. That makes 336 in the UK in total, he says.

The UK has recorded 51,459 new coronavirus cases, the goverment has disclosed on its dashboard. The total number of new cases over the past seven days is up 9.1% on the previous seven days. But hospital admissions and deaths are still, only just, on a downward trend week on week, by 0.8% and 0.2% respectively.

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Nadhim Zahawi, the education secretary, has confirmed that a review will be set up to investigate how child protection failures contributed to the death of six-year-old Arthur Labinjo-Hughes.

In a statement to MPs, he said the “whole nation is distraught” at the “tragic and horrific” death of Arthur. He went on: “We across this house and across this country find it impossible to imagine how any adult could commit such evil acts against a child.”

Zahawi said that the national child safeguarding practice review panel was set up in 2017 to investigate cases like this and that Annie Hudson, its chair, will “work with leaders in Solihull to deliver a single, national, independent review of Arthur’s death to identify what we must learn from this terrible case”. He went on:

I look forward to the review’s recommendations in due course, because in any complex system it is important - imperative in my view - to investigate thoroughly to learn and improve the system.

My mantra continues to be that sunlight is the best possible disinfectant – because if we are to improve services where they need improving, we must share data and evidence ...

As the court heard, Arthur’s tragic death is a result of the cruelty of his father and his father’s partner. No government anywhere in the world can legislate for evil. But we will take action wherever we can to stop this happening again, because we must do more, and to do more I would like to end my statement with a plea to everyone in our country.

Zahawi also said that, because so many agencies were involved in Arthur’s case, he had asked Ofsted, the Care Quality Commission, HM Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue services and HM Inspectorate of Probation to carry out a joint targeted area inspection, looking at how they cooperate in the Solihull area.

At the weekend the governmen briefed the punitive aspects of the 10-year drugs strategy. Boris Johnson gave an interview to the Sun on Sunday, which led to a story about how he was planning to unleash “an all-out war on drugs”, and it was announced that class A drug users could lose their passports or driving licences under the proposals.

But the Department for Health and Social Care and the Home Office have now published a joint news release about the strategy and it implies that drug treament is getting more priority than the crackdown on drugs gangs, at least if spending is used as a yardstick.

It says £300m is being spent on action against criminal gangs, but that £780m is being invested in drug treatment. These sums are part of a total spend of £3bn on drug enforcement and treatment over the next three years.

The government says the money will fund various measures including better drug treatment generally, more offender drug treatment services, more housing support for those at risk of sleeping rough and employment support for people with a drug or alcohol addiction.

It also says the role of healh and justice partnership coordinators will be extended. It explains:

The role of dedicated health and justice partnership co-ordinators, who liaise between prisons, probation and treatment providers, will be expanded to cover every region in England and Wales. This will mean services in prison and the community are better joined up and offenders’ treatment plans remain consistent, helping them to stay on track and break the cycle of reoffending once and for all.

A pilot will trial a new approach to how the courts deal with offenders with a history of drug abuse, where they will be seen regularly by the same judge, who has the power to order a number of sanctions and incentives, such as mandatory drug testing. Currently only offenders who agree to undergo treatment programmes can be subjected to regular testing.

The announcement has been welcomed by Dame Carol Black, who led the independent review of drugs policy. (See 3.18pm.) In a statement quoted in the government’s news release, she said she was delighted by this “very significant investment in drug treatment and recovery services”.

Reform UK has announced a defection to it ahead of the North Shropshire byelection on Thursday week. It says Mark Whittle, a town councillor in Market Drayton and a member of the local Conservative association’s executive, has joined the party. In a statement, Whittle suggests he is switching because the Tory byelection candidate, Neil Shastri-Hurst, is not sufficiently local.

Reform UK, the new name for what was the Brexit party, has made very little impact since the 2019 general election. But the Tories cannot ignore it completely. It is trying to outflank the party on the libertarian right, and at the Old Bexley and Sidcup byelection last week it picked up 6.6% of the vote.