No 10 stands firm against the great Manchester rebellion

Downing Street threatens action as northern leaders and cross-party MPS unite against tier three restrictions

IT WAS the day when Boris Johnson’s insistence that his response to the coronavirus crisis was led by the science unravelled live on national television and ended up as an unseemly political row about money.

A plan to put pressure on Greater Manchester to accept harsher coronavirus restrictions, by first announcing tougher measures for London, backfired when Andy Burnham, the northern city’s mayor, held a tea-time press conference to accuse ministers of “treating the North with contempt”.

On the steps of Manchester Town Hall, Mr Burnham said he was adamantly against his city moving into the “very high” tier of restrictions, in which pubs and bars would close and households would be unable to mix at all.

“They are willing to sacrifice jobs here to save them elsewhere,” he said angrily, “[but] we will not be treated as canaries in a coal mine for an experimental regional lockdown strategy.”

Mr Burnham demanded more money to support people whose jobs were under threat in a tougher lockdown – a “full and fair 80 per cent furlough scheme for all affected workers, 80 per cent income support for people who are self-employed and a proper compensation scheme for businesses”.

To cheers from the crowd, he said: “People are fed up of being treated in this way. The North is fed up of being pushed around. We aren’t going to be pushed around anymore.”

Plans to move Greater Manchester and other places in England into the upper tiers was agreed at a meeting of the Cabinet Office’s Covid-19 operation committee, which shapes the overall response to the pandemic, on Wednesday. Public health officials then briefed local newspapers that evening that the NHS was struggling to cope, and tier two areas had to go into tier three. That was intended to prepare the ground for a series of choreographed meetings to put pressure on Greater Manchester to accept tougher restrictions.

Sir Eddie Lister, the Prime Minister’s chief strategic adviser and a veteran of local government, was up early making personal calls to northern leaders.

That was followed by conference calls from health ministers to MPS in affected areas. The first came from Helen Whately and health advisers at 9.30am, to London MPS to prepare them for the capital moving from tier one to tier two.

One Tory MP who represents a London constituency said the decision was presented as a fait accompli: “It was totally useless. It was a very quick call. It was a case of, ‘we are doing this’.”

At 10.15am, Jo Churchill held her own call with Lancashire MPS.

One local Conservative MP labelled the call “dire” as Ms Churchill was unable to tell them which areas were going into the “very high” tier and how they could leave it.

The MP said: “They wanted to know if they were going from tier two into tier three, and then what rules you get from going from three backwards. Loads of people could not get in on their questions and it was all closed down.”

At 10.45am, Ms Whately was back on the conference call to more than two dozen Greater Manchester MPS, with Prof Jonathan Van-tam, England’s deputy chief medical officer. One Tory MP on the call said Labour and Conservative MPS were united in rejecting the move into tier three: “We were also really cross about things being handed down from the centre. The Labour MPS took the Burnham line that they would only approve it with lots of money.”

Trying to make the best of it, Ms Whately told MPS: “I take away that there were lots of different views on restrictions.” This resulted in the MPS shouting back: “No!”

Matt Hancock had hoped to include Greater Manchester in the new restrictions when he unveiled measures for the north of England at 11.30am in the House of Commons.

Yet the Health Secretary could only tell MPS that London, along with Essex, Elmbridge, Barrow-in-furness, York, North East Derbyshire, Erewash and Chesterfield would move into tier two.

A further 26.7 million people will now be in tier two from this weekend, leaving only Liverpool City region, comprising 1.6 million people, in tier three.

Greater Manchester was not mentioned. Attempts to secure agreement had only united the city region’s Tory and Labour MPS against the Government.

Sir Graham Brady, chairman of the 1922 Committee and MP for Altrincham and Sale West, in Greater Manchester, said: “The case has not been made for Greater Manchester to move into a tier three lockdown.”

William Wragg, Tory MP for Hazel Grove in the conurbation, said: “All of the MPS, leaders of councils and indeed the mayor, surprisingly, are in agreement with one another – the meeting we had earlier today was entirely pointless. I may as well have talked to a wall, quite frankly.”

Labour’s Lucy Powell, MP for Manchester Central, added there was “unanimous fury” about the process, evidence base and economic support packages.

“We want action but it has to be the right action, because we’ve lived in tier two for nearly three months and it’s not worked,” she said.

Mr Hancock urged her “to work together for the best outcome for the people of Greater Manchester”.

By early afternoon, the Government was battling a new front when Simon Hart, the Welsh Secretary, wrote to Mark Drakeford, the First Minister, asking how his government would enforce a ban on cross-border visitors.

Mr Drakeford’s “approach risks stirring division and confusion in Wales” and “requires urgent and thorough analysis”, Mr Hart said.

The stage was set for Mr Burnham to address the cameras from the steps of Manchester Town Hall at 4pm. Mr Hancock’s response in a clip from the roof of his Whitehall department building two hours later showed that the Government was giving no quarter.

He said: “The situation in the northwest of England is severe. The number of cases is rising exponentially, the number of people in hospital has doubled in just the last 12 days.

“So I call upon local leaders to set aside this party politics and to work with us to put in place the measures in Greater Manchester, across the North West, so that we can deal with this virus and support people through it.”

Whitehall sources briefed last night that Mr Burnham’s demand for more public money in tier three was likely to come to nothing “because there ain’t any”.

The likelihood now was that Greater Manchester would be forced into tier three as soon as today, with measures are laid in Parliament. A source said other regions in tier two, like Birmingham and possibly the North East, were likely to be next.

He added: “Other areas need to start looking over their shoulders. We are not doing it for no reason – their numbers are going through the roof. I don’t think this stalemate can last 24 hours.”