Mary Aiston, HMRC’s Director for Counter Avoidance, has written to Rt Hon. Sir Edward Davey MP, Ruth Cadbury MP, and Rt Hon. Sir Mike Penning MP, co-chairs of the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on the loan charge. The letter responds to questions about HMRC’s settlement opportunity letters and follow up calls.

We, the Foreign Ministers of France, Germany and the United Kingdom, share fundamental common security interests, along with our European partners. One of them is upholding the nuclear non-proliferation regime, and ensuring that Iran never develops a nuclear weapon. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPoA) plays a key role in this respect.

Together, we have stated unequivocally our regret and concern at the decision by the United States to withdraw from the JCPoA and to re-impose sanctions on Iran. Since May 2018, we have worked tirelessly to preserve the agreement.

As E3, we have fully upheld our JCPoA commitments, including sanctions-lifting as foreseen under the terms of the agreement. In addition we have gone beyond the commitments required by the agreement to support legitimate trade with Iran, including through INSTEX, which is fully operational and facilitating transactions.

Since 2019, Iran has taken nuclear measures contrary to its commitments under the JCPoA. We are deeply concerned by those actions, which seriously undermine the non-proliferation benefits of the agreement. That is the reason why the E3 initiated the JCPoA’s Dispute Resolution Mechanism on 14 January, in good faith and in hope of finding a diplomatic way forward, preserving the agreement and bringing Iran back to full compliance with its commitments under the JCPoA.

We urge Iran to pursue substantial discussions and actions in coordination with us and the other remaining JCPoA participants in this regard. To this end, the E3 reaffirm they are ready to engage in a meaningful and realistic approach and await a constructive Iranian response. We will seek a ministerial meeting to urge Iran to cooperate and to take stock of where we stand in the DRM process.

We also note with grave concern that despite the IAEA’s continuous efforts, Iran has denied the access requested by the Agency for many months, which prevents the Agency from fulfilling its mandate, and risks seriously undermining the global safeguards system if no progress is made.

At the initiative of the E3, a resolution was adopted with a very strong majority at the latest IAEA Board of Governors. We commend the IAEA for its work in verifying Iran’s safeguards obligations, and call on Iran to cooperate in a timely and complete manner with the IAEA and to grant access to sites as requested by the Agency.

The E3 remain committed to fully implementing Resolution 2231 by which the JCPoA has been endorsed in 2015. However, we believe that the planned lifting of the UN conventional arms embargo established by Resolution 2231 next October would have major implications for regional security and stability. We recall that the EU embargoes on conventional arms exports and missile technology will remain in force until 2023. We wish to address the issue in close coordination with Russia and China as remaining participants to the JCPOA, as well as with all other Security Council Members, as well as other key stakeholders. We will be guided by these objectives: upholding the authority and integrity of the UN Security Council and working toward regional security and stability.

We firmly believe that any unilateral attempt to trigger UN sanctions snapback would have serious adverse consequences in the UNSC. We would not support such a decision which would be incompatible with our current efforts to preserve the JCPoA.

We are convinced that we must address shared concerns about Iran’s nuclear program, its ballistic missile program and its destabilising regional activities in the long term. To this end, we continue to believe that the strategy of maximum pressure will not effectively serve this goal, and instead remain committed to holding Iran to account, while pursuing meaningful diplomacy and dialogue.

We remain committed to the JCPoA and, in order to preserve it, urge Iran to reverse all measures inconsistent with the agreement and return to full compliance without delay. We reaffirm our readiness to engage substantively with Iran.

Further information

The current growth rate for the UK as a whole is -4% to -2% and the R estimate for the UK, as a whole, remains at 0.7-0.9.

The growth rate reflects how quickly the number of infections are changing day-by-day. It is an approximation of the change of number infections each day. and If the growth rate is greater than zero (+ positive), then the disease will grow, and if the growth rate is less than zero then the disease will shrink.

The size of the growth rate indicates the speed of change. A growth rate of +5% will grow faster than one with a growth rate of +1%. Likewise, a disease with a growth rate of -4% will be shrinking faster than a disease with growth rate of -1%. Further technical information on growth rate can be found here.

R estimates do not tell us how quickly an epidemic is changing and different diseases with the same R can result in epidemics that grow at very different speeds. For instance, a disease with R=2 with infection lasting years will grow much more slowly than a disease with R=2 with infection lasting days. Growth rates provide us with different information to R estimates, by informing us of the size and speed of change, whereas R value only gives us information on the direction of change.

To calculate R, information on the time taken between each generation of infections is needed. That is how long it takes for one set of people in an infected group to infect a new set of people in the next group. This can depend on several different biological, social, and behavioural factors. The growth rate is estimated using a range of data similar to R, however it does not depend on the ‘generation time’ and so requires fewer assumptions to estimate.

Neither one measure, R nor growth rate, is better than the other but each provide information that is useful in monitoring the spread of a disease. The R estimate and growth rates are not the only important measures of the epidemic. Both should be considered alongside other measures of the spread of disease, such as the number of people currently infected.

The government has also today published updated regional R values, covering each of the NHS England regions in England.

As an average value, R can vary in different parts of the country, communities, and subsections of the population. It cannot be measured directly so there is always some uncertainty around its exact value. This becomes even more of a problem when calculating R using small numbers of cases, either due to lower infection rates or smaller geographical areas. This may be due to the uncertainty of the underlying data leading to a wider range for R.

Estimates of the growth rates and R are currently updated on a weekly basis. However, as the numbers of cases decrease, these metrics will become less helpful indicators and other measures need to be considered. These include the number of new cases of the disease identified during a specified time period (incidence), and the proportion of the population with the disease at a given point in time (prevalence), and these will become more important to monitor.

We are also publishing today under the same embargo further evidence that is informing the advice from SAGE. See the full set of evidence published to date.