Sir Mark Sedwill, the UK’s most senior civil servant, looks set to ­announce his departure as early as this week under Boris Johnson’s plans for a Whitehall revolution.

The ousting of Sir Mark will be the most obvious signal that a long-planned shake-up of the Civil Service by Dominic Cummings, Mr Johnson’s chief aide, is gathering pace.

Several sources told The Sunday Telegraph that an announcement would be made about Sir Mark’s future as early as Monday.

Sir Mark was appointed National Security Adviser by Theresa May in 2017 and then was made Cabinet Secretary a year later and controversially allowed to do both jobs.

One source said Sir Mark was “fighting to stay as National Security Adviser” and already seemed resigned to losing his post as Cabinet Secretary.

The source said: “He knows he has lost one half of his job. He is fighting to keep the national security one but they want to take everything off...

Prolonged periods of lockdown cocooning the public from germs could leave people dangerously vulnerable to new viruses, a leading epidemiologist has warned.

Sunetra Gupta, professor of theoretical epidemiology at the University of Oxford, fears intense social distancing could actually weaken immune systems because people are not exposed to germs and so do not develop defences that could protect them against future pandemics.

The scientist rose to prominence in March after her team’s modelling created a best case scenario where coronavirus arrived in the UK in December and spread quickly through the population creating “herd immunity”, already partly acquired through exposure to different strains of the virus.

Her research rivalled that of Professor Neil Ferguson, the Imperial College London professor whose worst case scenario of 500,000 UK deaths encouraged the Government into lockdown.

The Government has been accused of ensuring the prime suspect in the murder of WPc Yvonne Fletcher will never face justice by secretly barring him from returning to Britain.

The Sunday Telegraph can disclose that Saleh Ibrahim Mabrouk, a Libyan who has been living in Reading for a decade, was told that he was “excluded” from this country in January 2019 by the Home Office.

There are now fears that no one will ever be held to account for the murder of WPc Fletcher, who was killed by shots fired from the Libyan embassy in London in 1984.

The decision to bar Mabrouk from Britain comes as the Government said it had no powers to deport Libyan asylum seekers because to do so would breach their human rights owing to the dangers posed there.

Mabrouk is the only person ever arrested in connection with WPc Fletcher’s murder. He was a senior member of the “revolutionary committee” that ran the Libyan embassy at the time of WPc...

Sir Mark Sedwill, the UK’s most senior civil servant, looks set to ­announce his departure as early as this week under Boris Johnson’s plans for a Whitehall revolution.

The ousting of Sir Mark will be the most obvious signal that a long-planned shake-up of the Civil Service by Dominic Cummings, Mr Johnson’s chief aide, is gathering pace.

Several sources told The Sunday Telegraph that an announcement would be made about Sir Mark’s future as early as Monday.

Sir Mark was appointed National Security Adviser by Theresa May in 2017 and then was made Cabinet Secretary a year later and controversially allowed to do both jobs.

One source said Sir Mark was “fighting to stay as National Security Adviser” and already seemed resigned to losing his post as Cabinet Secretary.

The source said: “He knows he has lost one half of his job. He is fighting to keep the national security one but they want to take everything off...

Rishi Sunak is to issue a warning to government departments over their grip on spending, amid frustration at Gavin Williamson and Matt Hancock's handling of several schemes costing tens of millions of pounds.

Sources said the Chancellor had become "increasingly irritated" with "certain parts of Whitehall"  failing to work up sufficiently detailed spending proposals or presiding over poor delivery of projects.

Ahead of a government-wide spending review in the autumn, Mr Sunak is expected to write to Cabinet ministers to warn that they will be held to a "higher standard" as the country emerges from the height of the coronavirus epidemic. The Treasury will also conduct an audit of each department's finances.

The move follows frustration over the slow roll-out of a £100 million scheme, announced by Mr Williamson in April, to deliver laptops to disadvantaged children stuck at home because of school closures.

Separately, the Department of Health...

Coming a month after June’s Singapore encounter with Kim Jong-un were three back-to-back July summits: a long-scheduled Nato meeting in Brussels with our partners in America’s most important alliance; Trump and Theresa May in London, a “special relationship” bilateral; and Trump and Putin in Helsinki, neutral ground to meet with our once and current adversary Russia. As I realised during this busy July, if I hadn’t seen it earlier, Trump was not following any international grand strategy, or even a consistent trajectory. His thinking was like an archipelago of dots (like individual real estate deals), leaving the rest of us to discern – or create – policy. That had its pros and cons.

After Singapore, I travelled to various European capitals to prepare for the summits. One of my planned trips was to Moscow. That stop had its complications. When I told Trump about going there to lay the groundwork for his trip, he asked, “Do you have to go...

Coming a month after June’s Singapore encounter with Kim Jong-un were three back-to-back July summits: a long-scheduled Nato meeting in Brussels with our partners in America’s most important alliance; Trump and Theresa May in London, a “special relationship” bilateral; and Trump and Putin in Helsinki, neutral ground to meet with our once and current adversary Russia. As I realised during this busy July, if I hadn’t seen it earlier, Trump was not following any international grand strategy, or even a consistent trajectory. His thinking was like an archipelago of dots (like individual real estate deals), leaving the rest of us to discern – or create – policy. That had its pros and cons.

After Singapore, I travelled to various European capitals to prepare for the summits. One of my planned trips was to Moscow. That stop had its complications. When I told Trump about going there to lay the groundwork for his trip, he asked, “Do you have to go...

Boris Johnson is poised to announce a new "one metre plus" rule for all venues, including shops, restaurants, schools, offices, and parks, in an overhaul designed to unlock swathes of the economy.

The move, which would take effect from July 4, is understood to entail allowing people to remain a metre away from others if they take additional measures to protect themselves, such as wearing a mask or meeting outdoors.

In restaurants, pubs and bars, firms will be expected to introduce measures such as partitions between tables that are less than two metres apart.

It comes after Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor, said that No 10's review of the current rule would  “make an enormous difference” to businesses "who are keen to see a change", in a major hint of the planned relaxation.

Horror struck the home counties on Saturday night after three people were stabbed to death and two others were left in a critical condition following a frenzied broad daylight attack at a park in Reading town centre.

Sources told The Sunday Telegraph it was understood a suspect arrested at the scene was Libyan.

Boris Johnson said: “My thoughts are with all of those affected by the appalling incident in Reading and my thanks to the emergency services on the scene.”

According to eyewitnesses, a man began screaming and then produced a knife and embarked on a frenzied stabbing spree shortly after 7pm in Forbury Gardens, a park in the centre of Reading, Berks.

Lawrence Wort, 20, a personal trainer from Chippenham, watched the horror unfold from a distance of no more than 30 feet away.

Boris Johnson is poised to announce a new "one metre plus" rule for all venues, including shops, restaurants, schools, offices, and parks, in an overhaul designed to unlock swathes of the economy.

The move, which would take effect from July 4, is understood to entail allowing people to remain a metre away from others if they take additional measures to protect themselves, such as wearing a mask or meeting outdoors.

In restaurants, pubs and bars, firms will be expected to introduce measures such as partitions between tables that are less than two metres apart.

It comes after Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor, said that No 10's review of the current rule would  “make an enormous difference” to businesses "who are keen to see a change", in a major hint of the planned relaxation.