Lockdown breaking more common among the Welsh and Scottish

PEOPLE in Wales and Scotland are more likely to socialise indoors in breach of local restrictions, official figures show.

The Office for National Statistics published its weekly data covering Oct 20 to 25 on the social impacts of Covid19 yesterday – the first figures published by the ONS that take into account the three-tier system in England.

Researchers discovered that people living in higher tier levels in England reported lower levels of socialising indoors, while the opposite was true for those in Scotland and Wales.

According to the data, 81 per cent of people living in a lockdown area in Scotland or Wales met two to six people indoors while just 72 per cent of people who did not live in a lockdown area in the two countries did.

In comparison, the percentage for people living in England in Tier 1 was 86 per cent, for Tier 2 it was 75 per cent and for Tier 3 it was 73 per cent.

Last Friday, Wales entered a national lockdown to last until Nov 9. It means everyone must stay at home except for very limited purposes and not mix with other households. Non-essential shops and businesses must close.

Under Tier 3 in England – the highest alert – there can also be no mixing of households indoors or outdoors.

Meanwhile, Nicola Sturgeon, First Minister of Scotland, has introduced a new five-level system – running from zero to four – which comes into force in

Scotland from Monday. Under Level 4, non-essential shops are shut but up to six people can meet outdoors. She said that she could not rule out a move back to nationwide measures, and that this could involve level four restrictions.

Robert Dingwall, a sociology professor at Nottingham Trent University who has advised on government pandemic policy, said the data was “very puzzling”, as people under lockdown in Wales and Scotland “seem to be behaving like people who live in Tier 1 in England”.

“I don’t think there is an obvious explanation in terms of compliance or non-compliance,” he said, adding that there was a “generally low level of compliance everywhere regardless of what official restrictions were in place and wherever people were in the UK”.