G7: leaders to sign landmark global health declaration to stop future pandemics – live updates

Although there have been discussions about post Brexit trade deals and other issues, the main business of the summit today will see the leaders discuss building resilience to future crises, consider foreign policy and then decide on their response to Covid-19.

The group will commit to a new plan – the Carbis Bay Declaration – to quash future pandemics within the first 100 days, while the UK is creating a new animal vaccine centre aimed at preventing future diseases crossing to humans, PA news reports.

As part of Boris Johnson’s “Global Britain” agenda, the leaders of South Korea, India, Australia and South Africa will also take part in summit events, expanding the G7 to take in other prominent democracies.

Those leaders attending the event – India’s Narendra Modi is participating remotely because of the coronavirus crisis in his country – with a beach barbeque toasting marshmallows around fire pits.

In a clear dig about the former US president Donald Trump, French President Emmanuel Macron has praised Joe Biden, saying he is willing to co-operate and lead during a meeting at the G7 summit.

The US president, asked if America was back, turned to Macron and said the French leader should be asked that question.

“Yes definitely,” Macron said.

“It’s great to have a US president who’s part of the club and very willing to cooperate,” Macron said. “What you demonstrate is that leadership is partnership”

Boris Johnson has warned Brussels he will not hesitate to take unilateral measures to protect the position of Northern Ireland in the increasingly bitter row over post-Brexit trading arrangements.

The prime minister met key players from the EU side in the margins in the G7 summit as wrangling over the Northern Ireland protocol threatened to overshadow his hosting of the international gathering.

While Downing Street characterised the discussions as “constructive”, Johnson complained that some of the leaders failed to understand the UK was a single country. “I just need to get that into their heads,” he said.

He warned that unless there was a solution, he would invoke Article 16 of the protocol, which allows either side to take unilateral action if its implementation were to lead to “serious economic, societal or environmental difficulties”.

His comments followed a series of talks with the French president, Emmanuel Macron; the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel; the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen and the European Council leader, Charles Michel.

The head of the World Trade Organization said on Saturday she hoped that post-Brexit tensions between Britain and the European Union would not escalate into a trade war.

“I would really, really hope that a UK-EU trade war will not take place,” the WTO director general, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, said in response to a question when speaking to reporters covering the G7 summit in south-west England.

“With all the opportunities there are too for dialogue, I would be a little surprised if we ended up with a UK-EU trade war,” she said. “It’s too costly for both sides. This is not what the world needs right now.”

Boris Johnson has said the spread of the Delta variant of the coronavirus is a matter of “serious, serious concern” as he prepares to put lockdown lifting on hold.

The prime minister is expected to announce a delay of up to four weeks in the final easing of restrictions in England which had been due to take place on 21 June under the government’s road map.

Speaking during the G7 summit in Cornwall, he insisted that no decisions had been taken ahead of a formal announcement on Monday.

However he made clear that there had been a deterioration in the situation, with a surge in cases of the Delta variant – first detected in India – since the start of the month.

“It’s clear that the Indian variant is more transmissible and it’s also true that the cases are going up, and that the levels of hospitalisation are going up,” he told Sky News.

“Now, we don’t know exactly to what extent that is going to feed through into extra mortality, but clearly it’s a matter of serious, serious concern.”

Asked if he was less optimistic now than he was at the end of May, he said: “Yes, that’s certainly fair.

“What we want to do is make sure that the road map is irreversible, but you can’t have an irreversible road map unless you’re prepared to be cautious.

“Some of the data is still open to question, but we’ll be making an announcement on Monday.”

Sky’s political editor, Beth Rigby, asked Boris Johnson about comments he once made saying there would be a border in the Irish Sea “over my dead body”, and he said the EU understand “the strength of our feeling on this”.

He added: “I think [the Northern Ireland] protocol can work if it’s sensibly applied but at the moment it’s not just a question of chilled meats or sausages, there are all kinds of impediments being constructed, And we need to sort it out. I think we can sort it out.”

Rigby also asked Johnson about the Delta variant of coronavirus delaying lockdown, over which the government has said it will make a decision on Monday.

Johnson said: “It’s clear the Indian variant is more transmissible and it’s also true the cases are going up and that the levels of hospitalisation are going up.

“Now we don’t know to what extent that exactly is going to feed through into extra mortality but, clearly it’s a matter of serious, serious concern,” he added.

He said that the country would not go back to a full lockdown and that “the whole point of having an irreversible roadmap is just that – to make it irreversible.”

“To do that, as I’ve said repeatedly, you have to be cautious and where it’s necessary to be cautious we will do so.”

Rising Covid case numbers and hospitalisations are a matter of “serious, serious concern”, Boris Johnson said on Saturday, adding he was less optimistic about reopening the country than he was last month.

“It’s clear that the Indian variant is more transmissible and it’s also true that the cases are going up, and that the levels of hospitalisation are going up,” the prime minister told Sky News.

“Now, we don’t know exactly to what extent that is going to feed through into extra mortality, but clearly it’s a matter of serious, serious concern.”

Johnson is expected to set out on Monday whether a planned lifting of coronavirus restrictions in England can go ahead on 21 June, or whether rising cases will force it to be delayed.

Environmental protest groups have gathered in Cornwall as the UK prime minister, Boris Johnson, hosts leaders from the US, Japan, Germany, France, Italy and Canada at the G7 Summit in Carbis Bay.

They are calling for stronger action to tackle the climate crisis.

The White House says Joe Biden will hold a solo news conference after meeting the Russian president, Vladimir Putin.

The two delegations will have a working session and a smaller session as part of their meeting. But the White House says it is still finalising the format of the meeting.

The White House says a news conference with only Biden is the appropriate format to communicate the topics discussed, areas of agreement, and sources of significant concern.

The Carbis Bay declaration will set out the steps G7 countries will take to prevent a future pandemic. These include slashing the time taken to develop and license vaccines, treatments and diagnostics for any future disease to fewer than 100 days, a commitment to reinforce global surveillance networks and genomic sequencing capacity and support for reforming and strengthening the World Health Organization.

To stop animal-borne diseases before they put people at risk, the UK will establish a UK animal vaccine manufacturing and innovation centre at the Pirbright Institute in Surrey.

The centre will draw on Pirbright’s world-leading expertise to accelerate the delivery of vaccines for livestock diseases. These diseases pose a risk to people if they mutate to become transmissible to humans and can devastate agriculture in the UK and internationally. The UK has contributed £10m of funding for the centre.

The UK prime minister, Boris Johnson, said: “In the last year the world has developed several effective coronavirus vaccines, licensed and manufactured them at pace and is now getting them into the arms of the people who need them.

“But to truly defeat coronavirus and recover we need to prevent a pandemic like this from ever happening again. That means learning lessons from the last 18 months and doing it differently next time around.

The Carbis Bay declaration will be agreed upon by leaders today and published tomorrow alongside the G7 Summit Communique.

Dr Tedros Adhanom, the director-general of the World Health Organization, said: “We welcome the Carbis Bay health declaration, particularly as the world begins to recover and rebuild from the Covid-19 pandemic. Together we need to build on the significant scientific and collaborative response to the Covid-19 pandemic and find common solutions to address many of the gaps identified.”