By Chikamso Chukwuenyem for Mailonline

Published: 10:10 PM EDT, March 19, 2024 | Updated: 10:10 PM EDT, March 19, 2024

Chilling never-before-seen footage from a nanny cam has revealed the moment a battered husband cowered on the floor while his wife hurled abuse at him and brandished a knife in their home during her 20-year reign of terror.

Damning videos of Sheree Spencer’s attacks on husband Richard at their seven-bedroom home in Bubwith, East Yorkshire, were captured on cameras the couple had installed to monitor their children.

And explosive clips from police interviews show Sheree casually lying about her husband being the abuser, only for her face to turn ashen when confronted with the footage. 

On one occasion she defecated on the floor and forced him to clean it up, and on another she beat him with a wine bottle so hard it permanently disfigured his ear. 

Sheree, 45, was jailed for four years at Hull Crown Court in March last year by Judge Kate Rayfield, who told her: ‘This is the worst case of controlling and coercive behaviour I have seen.’

Now, Mr Spencer is sharing his story in vivid detail in Channel 5 documentary My Wife, My Abuser: The Secret Footage, which airs on Monday.

And today, MailOnline can reveal Sheree went to desperate lengths through the courts in a bid to stop the documentary being broadcast. 

The footage, obtained from the nanny-cam, gives a chilling real-life echo of Harlan Coben’s Netflix adaptation Fool Me Once, starring Michelle Keegan. In it, Keegan plays a woman who installs the small camera to keep watch over her young daughter, only to recognise an eerie figure from her past creeping into her home.

Mr Spencer felt his harrowing experiences should be seen to raise awareness of the type of abuse men can suffer in their daily lives at the hands of violent partners but Sheree tried to block it.

He told MailOnline: ‘Sheree tried to stop the documentary being broadcast in the crown court but failed, then she applied for a prohibited steps order through the family court, which luckily was rejected and thrown out at the first hearing.

‘The broadcast has been delayed due to the legal challenges for about six months, but now it is finally going to be shown.

‘I’m hopeful that the film will be well received and will make a difference.’

The hidden nanny cam gave a vital way out for battered husband Mr Spencer after he endured years of physical and verbal abuse from his wife, that left him ‘broken’ on the floor in a foetal position.

Mr Spencer had met his wife in a nightclub in 2000, and the pair married on a Thai beach in 2009.

After they welcomed the eldest of their three daughters in 2015, Mr Spencer installed the nanny cam so they could keep watch over her.

Instead, footage showed furious wine-fuelled tirades, in which Sheree would call her husband ‘fat boy,’ ‘a p**sy’ and ‘dumb dumb’ and inflict bruises and scratches that he would need to cover with make-up before going outside. 

Mr Spencer told The Sun: ‘We had two [cameras] — one in the playroom and one in the bedroom. They were there for reassurance, to keep an eye out because it’s a big house.

‘It was on something like a 28-day roll, where if something new came in it would delete the old footage.’

When police finally became involved, Mr Spencer handed over 43 images of his bruised face, taken on different dates following savage assaults he had suffered. 

A police officer tells the documentary: ‘This has been going on for such a long time, that this is who he is. Withdrawn and broken.’

Mr Spencer says: ‘I just wanted the abuse to stop. I was in a situation and there was no way out.’

Hull Crown Court heard that mother-of-three Sheree had carried out most of the attacks on her husband in the family home.

Sheree worked at the highest levels for HM Prison and Probation Service and bragged to friends that she had the ear of former prime minister Boris Johnson.

She was a project manager in the department’s directorate of strategy and performance.

A former friend said: ‘She would brag about being only two down from the prime minister in her field and had meetings with Boris Johnson, who she spoke of as though he were a friend.

‘She was bragging about her high flying career while subjecting her poor husband, a lovely man, to daily abuse, degradation and humiliation.’

It was described as ‘a great irony’ that Spencer had done so much work aimed at investigating the effect of custodial sentences on the family.

Within months of becoming a couple in 2000, Richard endured her violent rages, which happened whether she was drunk or sober.

The worst of the assaults on him happened in April 2021 when his wife attacked him with the empty wine bottle.

Mr Spencer, who stands at 5ft 10in, told the court that although he was bigger and physically stronger than his petite wife, he did not fight back when she began to attack him.

He said he became almost immune to the physical abuse she meted out, even though she would cause him immense pain by sinking her teeth into him.

But he said the mental scars left by 16 years of her hate-filled attacks were what would leave the most lasting effect.

Sheree’s reign of domestic terror finally ended in June 2021 when the police were called to their family home by a concerned welfare worker.

Her arrest that day on suspicion of assaulting her husband opened a door into the hell he had kept private for his entire married life.  

Mr Spencer said: ‘In trying to block the footage being shown, she continued trying to exert control even from jail, but fortunately justice prevailed.

‘It’s astonishing to me that she’s living a relatively easy life in prison, having been moved to an open jail after six months of her sentence.

‘The judge in her case described it as the worst case of coercive control she had ever seen, so why she was considered for open prison so early is beyond me.

‘She is due for release next February but she is able to go out for family and friend meetings and has been working in a cafe.

‘It doesn’t seem a just sentence for someone who committed such serious offences.’

Since his ex-wife’s imprisonment, Mr Spencer has joined a campaign called ManKind Initiative, which supports male victims of domestic abuse.

He has also found love again and told media he is happily settled with his new partner. 

Speaking to media after Sheree was jailed last year, he said: ‘I have become resigned to the fact that I will never fully recover from her abuse and that it will have a permanent damaging impact on mine and my family’s life.

‘Sheree’s abuse towards me evolved and escalated over time, she used repeated acts of physical assault, threats, verbal abuse, and humiliation to punish and exercise control over me.

‘The abuse was hidden from the outside world, including friends and family. Sheree manipulated me into believing that I was a responsible and willing participant in the abuse. She remorselessly proclaimed that I deserved to be punished, and that it was a justifiable consequence of me disappointing her in some way.

‘Little by little, I lost my independence and willpower and just accepted that was how my life was going to be. I complied with Sheree’s demands, and she controlled most aspects of my everyday life, including things like what activities I could participate in and when, which room I could sleep in, and even which toilet I could use.

‘Gradually I became isolated from family and friends and was left deep in debt causing me to feel trapped.

‘After a while, I learnt to cover my face with my hands and curl up into a foetal position to try and avoid sustaining any visible facial injuries, so that I could still take the children to school and nursery.’

TIKTOK will come under “scrutiny” in Britain after the US cleared the way to ban it on security grounds.

Rishi Sunak is under pressure to follow America in the crackdown on the Chinese app.

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Washington’s House of Representatives has passed a landmark bill that would give Beijing-based company ByteDance six months to sell the social media site or block it completely.

It led to calls for a similar ultimatum in Britain, with ex-Tory minister Lord Bethell demanding the Prime Minister “prioritize our national security”.

Downing Street has already banned TikTok from government devices after concerns were raised about data security.

Yesterday, Sunak’s spokesman said the app remains a “personal choice” for Britons but that security experts will “keep an eye on all these issues”.

He added: “It is clearly a matter for US lawmakers in terms of today’s bill. For our part, ensuring the security of UK data is a priority for the government.

“Our experts will continue to monitor threats to our data and we will not hesitate to take action as necessary to protect our national security.”

Tory peer Lord Bethell yesterday backed US lawmakers who are taking steps to block the influence of the Chinese state.

He said: “The lack of transparency and respect for normal business practices has raised questions about surveillance, influence peddling and harmful algorithms.

“As a society, it is time to address these concerns and prioritize our national security and the safety of our children.”

TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chou yesterday emphasized that the data on his platform is “free from outside manipulation.”

TYSON and Paris Fury went shopping in Asda in a way that would have made Boris Johnson ‘proud’.

The heavyweight world boxing champion gave his 6.9 million a glimpse into a day in his life.

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In between training sessions and healthy meals, the Gypsy King showed off his beautiful green £190,000 Lamborghini Urus.

And the father-of-seven – who lives in a £550,000 Morecambe mansion – also took the rubbish out by the skip.

But to end the evening, Fury and his wife Paris visited Asda – their favorite supermarket since they married 16 years ago.

The boxing superstar filmed childhood sweetheart Paris looking for pajamas for one of their children.

And he insisted Lancashire cheese – which cost £2.75 – was “the best”.

Fury then hilariously refused to pay the £6.10 premium for Nutella spread, opting for Asda’s own spread instead.

He said: “Decisions, decisions. Do you spend £6.10 on a jar of Nutella or spend £1.85 on chocolate spread? I think we’ll take this one, Paris.”

The couple instead settled for Asda’s cheaper hazelnut chocolate spread, which cost £2.75 and saved £3.35 at Nutella.

CHELTENHAM BETTING OFFERS – BEST FREE BETTS FOR THE FESTIVAL

Paris said: “Boris Johnson would be proud.”

Fury continued his savings campaign after refusing to let Paris buy a box of Ferrero Rocher popsicles for £5.

He said, “Put them back! They cost a fiver for a couple of popsicles. I don’t think so! Five quid for a couple of popsicles, buy the one pound one.”

They opted for a £1 Vimto lollipop after Fury said: “Value for money.

“After spending all the money on the Lambo in Paris, I think we should save some money on groceries.”

Ultimately it came down to paying the bill and Fury joked about the price increases over the past twenty years.

He said: “Paris, we have been coming to this Asda for 16 years since we got married.

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“We built our first shop here and it only cost about €40 for the two of us, but with all those children it doesn’t cost €40 anymore, does it?

“Costs about £140! But there you go, married all these years and we still shop in the same store in Paris, in the same location, Paris”

The happy couple welcomed their seventh child in September: son Prince Rico.

He joined Venezuela, 13, Prince John James, 11, Prince Tyson II, seven, Valencia Amber, five, Prince Adonis Amaziah, four, and Athena, two.

Despite a day of sober savings, Fury then showed off a private jet with the caption: “Business call.”

The two-time champion returns in an undisputed title fight against Oleksandr Usyk, 37, in Saudi Arabia on May 18.

The fight was scheduled for February 17 until Fury suffered a cut in sparring, but he has insisted the cut has healed and training is back on.

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The photo will cause a lump in the throat of hundreds of thousands of Britons who received a ‘privileged’ education at boarding school. The young boy, stiff and unsmiling, in a uniform tie and an oversized suit, stands by the family car, about to leave for his first day. Sister and babysitter look on proudly.

The brand new suitcase bears the name C. Spencer, the sister is Diana, later Princess of Wales. It’s 1972 and Charles is only eight.

If he looks rather grim for a child going on a Harry Potter-style adventure, it is because, as he writes, he is very scared: ‘I had only been away from home for one night and before that I had been sleepless for six months. to go.’

He was right to be nervous. Spencer attended Maidwell Hall, an elite all-boys school that would set him on the path of becoming the eldest male child of a grand and aristocratic family: Eton, Oxford and later, after his father’s death, the House of Lords. .

But that day in 1972 was the beginning of a five-year horror, a “hellish experience” that, Spencer writes in his new book, would destroy two of his marriages and predispose him to lifelong depression.

The main stories from Spencer’s brave and furious memoir A Very Private School – exclusive extracts of which were published yesterday in the Mail on Sunday – are of course about the sexual abuse he and other boys experienced at Maidwell Hall.

There was the assistant matron who kissed and sexually abused him in his bed from the age of 11. The woman, twenty, was a serial predator.

Other boys, none older than thirteen, were brought to her bed and forced to have sex with her. Spencer says she emotionally manipulated them all – to the point where he cut his arm with a pocket knife to get more of her attention.

Boys were vulnerable to such a monster because, sent away from their families, they were a textbook example of neglect: children in desperate need of love. The man in charge at Maidwell – the director John ‘Jack’ Porch – was in loco parentis, the surrogate father. But he was a sadist who derived sexual pleasure from his brutal abuse of Spencer and the other children.

There is more. Spencer writes about the “anxious despair” he felt every day at school, about shooting himself in the foot so he wouldn’t have to return at the end of the holidays, about feeling abandoned by his parents to be because he wasn’t good enough. And the lifelong emotional damage that resulted from it.

This should give pause to all the parents who still pay to send their children away from home to be cared for by those who don’t love them – more than 70,000, even today.

“Some things died for me between my eighth and thirteenth birthdays, when I was in the care of Jack Porch. . .’ writes Spencer. “Innocence, trust, joy – all were trampled and diminished.”

These words stand out to me because very similar things happened at my Eton-feeder prep school, Ashdown House, in the 1970s. I started at the small boarding school on the same day as Viscount Linley, Queen Elizabeth’s cousin; Three years later, Boris Johnson showed up.

Sexual violence by the teachers was common. One of them is now in prison and another is being extradited from South Africa to face multiple charges of child abuse in Ashdown and elsewhere. I was sexually fondled by two others: the math teacher and the French teacher. So did the journalist Sir Nicholas Coleridge, who would soon become the next provost of Eton College.

The two great headmasters who presided over Ashdown in those years very quickly resorted to violence; stupidity in class or talking after lights out could lead to being viciously beaten with a bamboo stick. That was legal, of course.

Even more culpable, they looked away even when faced with complaints from parents about the sexual predators on their staff. David Linley, who was deeply miserable at school, was withdrawn by his parents mid-year. But Ashdown and Maidwell Hall are not exceptional.

What happened there, the total failure of child protection, the cover-up of abusers, was ridiculously common. In 2014 I wrote in a newspaper about Ashdown and the culture that tolerated sexual abuse, neglect and cruelty in private schools.

My email inbox was then flooded for months with stories from others about sexual abuse and violence at boarding schools, both state and private. Many had never talked about their shame and pain before.

In a book, and on radio and TV, I have since investigated some of these allegations, most recently at Scotland’s Edinburgh Academy and Fettes College. Broadcaster Nicky Campbell subsequently made public the violence and sexual attacks on him and his friends at the Academy by staff in the 1970s.

I have registered every credible and serious complaint. There are now almost 1,200 allegations in my database, with 490 schools and more than 300 staff members named. Most complaints concern male predators, but there are a significant number of women who have physically and psychologically abused students in both boys’ and girls’ schools.

Maidwell Hall appears in the spreadsheet. Former poet laureate Andrew Motion, who was at Maidwell a decade before Spencer, has told how he was sexually abused by an English teacher there.

I have received more stories from former students about the ‘sadism’ of principal Jack Porch, and about sexual relations between the boys at school, including rape.

That’s no surprise either. One of the disturbing consequences of sexual abuse of young children is that they can become ‘hypersexual’ and in their confusion seek more experiences. In the book, Spencer describes how he lost his virginity at the age of 12 to an Italian prostitute whom he paid with his pocket money.

When I went to Eton after high school, like Spencer, it was in a sexually charged environment, with a culture where younger boys were exploited by older boys – and not without their own predatory teachers.

What is clear is that this was all an open secret in the upper class from the 19th century onwards. That the schools were harsh and cruel was accepted as necessary – the reinforcement that children need. It had worked for generations to produce Britain’s leaders.

The schools were also known to attract and tolerate predators. Evelyn Waugh wrote a novel, Decline And Fall, in which one is a comic character. “Pederasts are actually very good teachers,” was the wisdom.

Spencer has a lot in common with others who suffered at school. Like many, shame kept him silent; it was thirty years before he told others what happened to him. The matron is now said to be in her late sixties. She has not been prosecuted.

The complex PTSD that can result from neglect and abuse over an extended period of time in childhood is well studied; There is a recognized specialty in psychology called the boarding school syndrome. After all, almost a million living British people went to boarding school, and my research shows that a third were unhappy, or worse.

‘Emotional dysregulation’, feelings of guilt and shame and periods of extreme depression, drug or alcohol use are common symptoms. In addition to the former residents are the survivors of state care.

Many of the bordals and orphanages were deliberately run along the lines of ‘public schools’. And abuse and cover-up were common there, just as managers at the NHS and the BBC concealed or ignored suspicions about Jimmy Savile.

This is all ancient history, say today’s schools. Maidwell Hall – it still stands and now costs more than £30,000 a year – told the Mail: ‘School life has evolved considerably since the 1970s. At the heart of the changes is the protection of children and the promotion of their well-being.’

But these days I get reports from parents of children in private schools talking about security protocols that haven’t worked, and that abuses and staff failures have been ignored or covered up. There are still 70,000 boarders in fee-paying schools. Our failing state care and detention systems house more than 100,000 more children. Are we sure they are safe?

The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA), funded by the government, completed seven years of work (at a cost of £180 million) and published its recommendations in October 2022. It concluded that institutions caring for children needed to do much more their safety.

Incredibly, in Britain there is still no legal requirement to report an adult suspected of abusing a child. Last month, the government finally announced legislative changes in response to IICSA. “We are working hard to get mandatory reporting of child sexual abuse into law,” said Home Secretary James Cleverly.

Cleverly’s proposals are being watered down. Campaigners say they will not even bring UK child protection rules up to the standards of most other countries. Therefore, what Charles Spencer writes is not just history; it is an urgent message for parents and anyone who cares about children today.

Alex Renton is a journalist and presenter. His book Stiff Upper Lip: Secrets, Crimes And The Schooling Of A Ruling Class is published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson.

Within hours of King Charles' cancer diagnosis being revealed last Monday, AI-generated books had appeared for sale online, detailing inaccurate, insensitive and invasive claims about his condition.

The palace announced that the king was consulting his lawyers to counter this scandalous invasion of his privacy.

The books, compiled from a range of internet sources, are nothing more than computer-generated lies. The intimate conversations they supposedly describe between the king and his doctors are in fact taken from social media sites and other online sources, where people have chosen to share their experiences with cancer treatment.

You can only imagine how painful it all is for Charles and the rest of the royal family. But he's not the only one.

Very shortly after my own book, The Plot: The Political Assassination Of Boris Johnson, was released last November, I was shocked to discover that Amazon was selling AI-produced biographies of me, which cost £12.50 and contained sensational writing.

One of those titles, Nadine Dorrie's Biography Book: The Untold Story Of The Outspoken Boris Johnson Minister Shaking Things Up, claimed to be a 'captivating masterpiece'.

Needless to say, I wouldn't have approved of any of these fakes. Even after my complaints to Amazon, the “Biography Book” remains available for sale, supposedly without violating the website's guidelines.

There is a photo of a woman on the front, possibly self-generated by AI. She has strangely familiar features, like platinum hair, blue eyes, similar bone structure and prominent cheekbones – but she's definitely not me.

This book claims to reveal the 'multi-faceted layers of Dorrie's life, chronicling her rise to success, political ideology and unwavering determination to make a difference'.

Instead, it's a compilation of newspaper clippings and other sources, pieced together by an AI robot.

It broke my heart when I read an Amazon review from someone who bought it for his wife for Christmas, in addition to his purchase of The Plot.

“The book is A4, very large print and 65 pages,” he wrote.

'Anyone could read this in less than an hour. . . It's clearly a quick money-making opportunity for the publisher. I only gave it one star, because you can't give less.'

I'm shocked to think that people are being duped by this tech-generated waste, believing it to be something I produced or approved.

Consumers, authors – and the King himself – must now be protected from such nonsense, and I hope this is where the royal lawyers will turn their attention.

It's no secret that the reason Jeff Bezos launched Amazon by selling books was because the affluent middle class bought them — and, he reasoned, once they got comfortable buying books on his website, they would for all other uses. at.

Amazon is now the global superstore – and it was built on the sweat and toil of writers.

The company collects up to 65 percent of the price of each of these fake books sold on its platform.

The law needs to be amended. All AI work must be clearly labeled so consumers know what they are buying.

This way we can decide for ourselves whether or not to waste our money – and always choose the real money.

Don't be fooled by senior Labor figures who are trolling the city and claiming they have become the party of growth and prosperity. If they win the next election, things will be back to normal once the champagne corks stop popping. The unions that fund the party will be in control and Starmer, as was the case with so many Labor leaders before him, will have no choice but to submit to their demands. Before long, our economy will be in a much worse state.

It is the worst kept secret in Westminster that Rishi Sunak, who desperately wanted to become Prime Minister, now hates his job. What a miserable situation you are in! There may be early elections.

If Rishi hates it so much, I can't see him staying in Britain for the entire summer break – and the polls are getting worse every month. Better to go now and leave at least part of the group behind to survive and regroup. We now hear that he has no intention of asking Boris for help – even though Boris won two mayoral elections in London when the Conservatives under David Cameron were trailing in the polls.

The Brexit referendum was launched when Boris joined the Leave campaign, and of course he won a stunning majority of 80 seats in the 2019 general election. In the words of a former ministerial colleague: 'Get over yourself, Rishi – and pick up the phone.

Why snowdrops move me to tears

When British soldiers returned from the Crimean War in the 1850s, they arrived with bags full of snowdrop bulbs from the countries in which they had fought. As I walked the dogs through our small village cemetery on Sunday, I noticed that many of the older graves around the cemetery were covered in white blankets of snowdrops.

I unexpectedly found my eyes filling with tears. Graves long forgotten, unkempt, with no living relatives to lay flowers, were more beautiful than more recent additions – including those of my own late husband.

I intend to put that right and have ordered a supply of snowdrop bulbs to plant next year, knowing that when I finally join him there, we will put on a thriving display together.

Hats off to the royal stand-ins

The women in the royal family do what women always do in a crisis: put their heads down and keep the show on. At a conference in Texas last weekend, Fergie – who, like the King, is battling cancer – assured the crowd that “everything will be fine and we will keep fighting.”

Meanwhile, Queen Camilla and Princess Anne (76 and 73 respectively) are working hard to ensure no one is left behind while Charles receives treatment and Kate recovers from her recent abdominal surgery. One look at Camilla and Anne's schedules made me need a nap.

We can consider ourselves lucky to have two such indomitable women among our royal family. I just hope they both get the support they deserve: their health is important too.

Actor Ralph Fiennes is absolutely right: “trigger warnings” in theaters are absurd. Of course the audience should be shocked and disturbed… and laugh and cry at what they see on stage. That's what theater is for, to arouse emotions and take you to another world. Trigger warnings are just as bad as spoilers. Where has all the fun gone in this crazy, woke world?

Taylor Swift made the mammoth trip from Japan to Las Vegas this weekend to watch her boyfriend Travis Kelce play in the Super Bowl, flying across nine time zones. En route, she encountered a faulty flush in the toilet of her private jet. It just goes to show that no matter how rich you are, everyone needs a good plumber.

Don't you wish you were still dating Nicole and Lewis?

Former Pussycat Doll Nicole Scherzinger, dazzled as she accepted her award for Best Performer in a Musical (for Sunset Boulevard) at Sunday's WhatsOnStage ceremony. At 45, she has never looked so hot. I can only imagine that Lewis Hamilton and every other ex are kidding themselves, while her former Scottish rugby player fiancé, Thom Evans, has won the catch of a lifetime.

By Rory Tingle

Published: 09:11 EST, February 8, 2024 | Updated: 09:53 EST, February 8, 2024

SAJID Javid today said there is no need to introduce further Covid restrictions and move away from Plan B at this time.

The Health Secretary insisted there was nothing in the data to suggest more rules were needed – just hours before the Prime Minister was due to brief the nation at 5pm.

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Boris Johnson will speak to Britons for the first time this year as he considers whether more lockdown rules are needed to curb cases.

The Prime Minister will address the nation on the latest Omicron data at 5pm with top docs Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance.

The Prime Minister said yesterday that Omicron is “clearly milder” than previous variants, after studies showing it is up to 70 percent less severe.

A third jab also significantly reduces the risk of becoming seriously ill – and The Sun's Jab's Army campaign is helping to get vital boosters into people's arms.

Speaking to broadcasters after a visit to a vaccination center in south London, Mr Javid said: “There is nothing in the data at the moment that suggests we need to move away from Plan B.

“I think Plan B, in implementing that, has been the right approach and it is absolutely focused on the vaccination programme.”

Mr Javid noted that “it's fantastic to reach over 75% of eligible adults getting a boost”, but stressed that “we still need to reach that other 25% and that can really make a difference in the way this country gets through this pandemic.”

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Despite rising cases of super-pressure, ministers are increasingly confident that hospitals will not become overwhelmed as feared.

Mr Johnson is even facing calls to relax the rules by cutting isolation time from seven to five days to ease the pressure of staff absences.

Meanwhile, children face chaos on their first day of school as the teacher shortage threatens more closures and a return to damaging remote learning.

For important developments:

• Millions of students will wear masks in classrooms when they return today
• Scientists were “cautiously optimistic” that Covid was leveling off in London
• Ministers played down fears that the booster rollout would slow
• A vaccine guru said the worst days of the pandemic are “behind us”.

Johnson is resisting furious calls from Tory MPs to shorten the isolation period from seven to five days to help speed up the return to work.

Ministers say this could have a spectacular backfire and potentially lead to more infections overall.

Ms Throup said: “We do not feel it is appropriate to reduce the disease any further as we are very concerned that people will still be contagious and can pass on the disease.”

The Prime Minister is meeting with officials this morning to review the latest data ahead of the decision not to take any further damaging measures.

He is expected to stick to the plan of working from home, indoor masks and Covid passports – and boosters – when Parliament returns tomorrow.

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Ahead of the announcement, Mr Javid said: “There is nothing in the data at the moment that suggests we need to move away from Plan B.

“I think Plan B, in implementing that, has been the right approach and it is absolutely focused on the vaccination programme.”

POSITIVE DATA

Ministers and experts have become increasingly optimistic that the doomsday scenarios of flooded hospitals will be avoided.

Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, said hospital admissions “may appear to be at a plateau in London”.

Top expert Prof Neil Ferguson also believes interest rates in the capital could level off after a Christmas peak.

He said: “I think I am cautiously optimistic that infection rates in London in the key 18 to 50 age group, which caused the Omicron epidemic, may have stabilised. It is still too early to say whether they are already declining. .”

And Sir Andrew Pollard, head of Oxford's vaccines department, praised that “the worst is definitely behind us. We just have to get through the winter.”

A further 157,758 Covid cases were recorded yesterday and a further 42 deaths.

Although the Omicron is clearly milder, the sheer number of cases has forced large numbers of workers into isolation, wreaking havoc on sectors and schools.

Ministers have reportedly been asked to submit plans on whether the military is likely to be needed to fill shortages in their areas.

The Prime Minister's spokesperson said: “All departments have been asked to look at how they could reduce the large-scale absenteeism of their relevant workforce, up to 25%.

“In some circumstances it may be necessary for a Maca request to be made, a request for military assistance, but in other circumstances this may not be the case.

“There is no blanket requirement for military assistance.”

UNDER-18s can book their Covid booster jabs online from Monday.

Top-up doses will initially be available to 40,000 16 and 17-year-olds – as Prime Minister Boris Johnson prepares to drop Covid Plan B rules.

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The NHS has revealed that almost 900,000 teenagers in this age group – around seven in 10 – have had one dose.

And around 600,000 people have already visited their second injection site.

They will be eligible for a third in the coming weeks, after a three-month gap between doses.

Invitations will be sent out to encourage high participation, with the group able to book through an online system or simply get one at the nearest drop-in centre.

Until now, boosters have only been recommended for the clinically vulnerable in this specific age group.

Analysis by the British Health Security Agency has shown that a booster shot, on top of the two doses, increases protection against Omicron.

But the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunization says the NHS is unable to jab 16 and 17-year-olds who have had a positive Covid case in the last 12 weeks.

Those considered high risk must wait four weeks.

Follow our Covid live blog for the latest updates

Health Secretary Sajid Javid said last night: “We can learn to live with Covid if everyone comes forward for their vaccines and gets a boost now.”

Dr. Nikki Kanani, GP and deputy head of the NHS vaccination programme, said: “Covid has caused so much disruption to so many families over the last two years, impacting the lives and education of young people.

“I would urge everyone, whatever your age, to come forward and get that vital supplement as soon as it is possible.”

Boris Johnson is set to drop Plan B rules – such as working from home and Covid passes – from January 26, with an announcement as soon as this week.

Ministers will also discuss whether face masks will continue in indoor locations.

The number of Covid infections fell again yesterday, with 81,713 compared to 99,652 on Friday.

The seven-day rolling total was 402,686 lower than the previous week. There were 287 deaths, an increase from the 270 reported the day before.

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By Geraint Llewellyn for Mailonline

Published: 7:07 PM EST, January 20, 2024 | Updated: 7:07 PM EST, January 20, 2024