Welsh landlords in a ferment over order to bar English drinkers

WELSH landlords have criticised new rules forcing pubs to ask drinkers to prove they are not from England as the country emerged from its 17-day “firebreak” lockdown.

Mark Drakeford, the Welsh first minister, insisted yesterday that it was the right time for his country to lift restrictions despite sharp rises in Covid cases and the decision by the UK government to begin a lockdown in England.

Mr Drakeford promised that Wales will enforce the hardest border with its neighbour for “several centuries” to prevent people from crossing into the country after restrictions were relaxed.

In recent months Mr Drakeford has repeatedly accused Boris Johnson of failing to take sufficiently strong action to prevent Covid transmission.

However, the Welsh government admitted yesterday that the firebreak had been lifted before data on cases and hospital admissions had proved the lockdown was working.

Under the relaxed rules, groups of up to four people can now meet up in cafés, pubs and restaurants, while shops, gyms, hairdressers and places of worship will also reopen. Shops can start selling goods again after a row over supermarkets taping off aisles of “nonessential items”. Alcohol sales will stop at 10pm, though drinkers will be required to prove their home address to prove they have not travelled from England for a drink.

Mandy Broady, landlady of The Boat Inn in Chepstow, said rules on checking ID were “unfair” on staff. She said: “I am doing everything I can to keep my staff and customers safe, we are taking all their details, making sure we keep to rules on social distancing but I think it’s a little unfair to expect us to police the IDS of everyone who comes in.

Neil Foreman manages The Anchor Inn, a gastropub 10 minutes from England in the Monmouthshire village of Tintern and said his customers were usually a 50/50 split between Welsh and English.

He said: “If someone shows us a bank card with their name on that is an acceptable form of ID but that wouldn’t say whether they are from England. It’s going to cause conflict.”

Mr Drakeford faced criticism yesterday for lifting the lockdown while admitting the impact would “not be felt for another week or two”. However, Dr

Frank Atherton, Wales’s chief medical officer, suggested there were some “early signs” that the restrictions had worked. When Wales imposed a two week firebreak lockdown on Oct 23, the daily rate of new cases – averaged over the previous seven days – stood at 33 per 100,000. It had doubled over the course of October, from 16 on Oct 3.

Merthyr Tydfil is seeing the highest case rates in Wales, with 523.8 cases per 100,000 over the last week. At the other end of the scale the least affected area – Pembrokeshire – is seeing case rates 13.5 times lower. For the two most concrete measures of success in controlling the virus – hospitalisations and deaths – it remains too early to gauge how effective the Welsh firebreak has been.