Distancing rules risk last orders for pubs

Britain’s hospitality industry needs a saviour and what better cheerleader than Ed Miliband, a man who managed to singlehandedly derail Labour’s 2015 election campaign simply by setting foot in a greasy spoon café, possibly for the first time in his life.

Rumour has it that exasperated parents no longer scare disobedient children with stories of the bogeyman, but just pull out that picture of the former opposition leader eating a bacon sandwich as if all his facial muscles had suddenly stopped working.

Still, the shadow business secretary makes a valid point when he calls for a second round of support for companies in certain sectors.

First in the queue should be those working in hotels, pubs, restaurants and cafés across the country.

More than 3m people earn a living in the hospitality industry, when supply chains are included, making it one of the UK’S biggest private sector employers, and yet it is in danger of being forgotten about by ministers.

Perhaps it is the nature of the work that makes it slip under the radar: low-skilled, low-paid jobs; long hours; seasonal work; a heavy reliance on foreign labour.

It’s hard to imagine the Government being so complacent about the pharmaceuticals sector, aerospace or any other hi-tech export industry.

Slowly but surely, Britain is getting back to work. But as factories, car dealerships, shops and even airlines reboot operations, the hospitality sector remains frozen out in the cold with no hope of businesses reopening until July, and even then the prospects for many are decidedly grim thanks largely to social distancing. Company chiefs insist that the two-metre limit will decimate pubs and restaurants when they open their doors again, for the simple reason that they won’t be able to serve enough people to make a profit.

Forget having to replace ketchup bottles and salt cellars with disposable sachets or banning customers from loitering at the bar.

Such measures are nothing more than a minor inconvenience if premises are forced to follow the current guidelines on distancing.

At just half that distance, restaurants and pubs say they would be able to generate between 60pc and 70pc of normal turnover, compared with 30pc at two metres.

The British Beer & Pub Association says three quarters of pubs would be viable, instead of just one third, and industry body UK Hospitality estimates 1m jobs could be saved. Pub operator Young’s, which has 300 sites, says it cannot make a profit.

But the restriction is as mystifying as it is damaging, and not just because the scientific evidence to support it is inconclusive at best. One metre is the internationally recognised standard but the Government, in its infinite wisdom, is choosing to ignore it.

Extending the furlough scheme again, for the worst-affected companies, will help some to survive, as will improving the flow of emergency loans. But loosening the restrictions in line with the rest of the world would be far more effective.

As Patrick Dardis, the Young’s boss, says, if “the one-metre [rule] is good enough for the Danes, the French, the Italians, the WHO [World Health Organisation], it’s good enough for us”. Quite.

Quarantine misses the mark

Here’s a statistic for the times: British Airways flew 485 passenger flights for the entire month of May, the same number that it had flown by lunchtime on May 1 last year.

No wonder boss Willie “Slasher” Walsh is on the rampage over the new quarantine measures, threatening to sue the Government.

It is about three months too late anyway. The time to move was at the beginning of the outbreak but back then ministers were dithering and still debating whether herd immunity was the way to go.

Meanwhile, travellers from virus hotbeds such as China, America, Italy and Brazil could step off a plane at Heathrow and hop on to a tube straight into central London without even being checked.

Better still, they could have made their way up to the Cheltenham Festival and joined the super-spreader event of the year.

Implementing it now will have little effect, especially if the latest draft plans are anything to go by.

New arrivals will be able to go food shopping, change accommodation and use public transport. Which begs the question: what’s the point of quarantine in the first place? If only Priti Patel could tell us.

‘Company chiefs insist that the two-metre limit will decimate pubs’