They are trying to deal with the virus on the cheap and making the North pay the price...

Throughout this crisis, I have tried to give the Government the benefit of the doubt. I have been Health Secretary during a global pandemic – I have an idea how hard it is. I made mistakes, for sure.

But I also like to think that I tried to learn from them as I went along.

That doesn’t seem to be the case with this lot.

Once again this week, people across the North were left reading a late-night newspaper report to learn their fate. Pubs and restaurants across the North would close from Monday, we were told.

Despite having had meetings with two Cabinet ministers this week with fellow northern mayors, there was no mention of this. This isn’t just unfair to us – it is downright disrespectful to the millions of people who work in hospitality across the North who have spent today worrying about their jobs. And they are right to be worried. A few weeks ago, the Government closed bars and restaurants in Bolton without giving employees any help with their wages through a local furlough scheme.

To have to read about plans to close pubs and restaurants on the front page of a national newspaper late at night is unacceptable.

It will feel to many in the North that this Government is treating them with contempt.

“They are losing the dressing room”, one senior northern leader said of the Government this week.

That seems to sum up the general mood.

It is my job as Mayor of Greater Manchester to stand up for the 2.8 million people living here, who have already had to endure two months of restrictions on their businesses, their home lives, their friends and their families.

People here cannot go on waiting each week to be told by ministers, through cosy chats with Westminster journalists in London bars, what our fate is going to be.

There is going to have to be change if Government wants the

North’s continuing co-operation. The Government have not yet presented to us the detail of what they plan to do with their new “three tiers” system.

It is absolutely vital that they do that, and present the evidence behind it, so that we can debate it with them and, hopefully, agree it.

That would help bring people back together before the winter.

But I say this to the Prime Minister: I will not agree any

Empty tables at restaurant in Manchester last night as threat of closure looms package which does not ensure that, if people’s place of work is to close, there is access to a local furlough scheme which covers their wages.

In principle, I am not opposed to further restrictions if there is evidence to support them.

But I am opposed to their being imposed without agreement by a Government trying to deal with a virus on the cheap and making the North of England pay the price.

To have to read about plans to close pubs on the front of a newspaper is unacceptable

ANDY BURNHAM ON GOVERNMENT’S CHAOTIC HANDLING OF LOCKDOWNS

CITY’S PLEA Shoppers pass billboard in Manchester yesterday