Hospitality industry is ‘frontline disaster’: Caring

ONE OF the Britain’s top restaurateurs has warned the government that it is “killing the country” by failing to take decisive action to save the hospitality industry.

Richard Caring, whose portfolio incudes The Ivy restaurants and Annabel’s club in London, told the Mail on Sunday that a volcano was waiting to erupt, causing the loss of millions of jobs.

The government has indicated that pubs and restaurants could reopen on July 4 but is under pressure from industry figures who say that many businesses will be unviable if the 2m social distancing rule remains in force.

Mr Caring said that half of the four million hospitality jobs could disappear when the government’s furlough scheme — paying up to £30,000 a week for people not working under shutdown — ends in the autumn.

“The fact is, down the road there’s a volcano that is going to bubble over,” he said. “The pain and suffering it is going to cause is horrific.”

While there were estimates that unemployment could soar to five million, he said, “It’s not going to be five million — it’s going to be more. I don’t think we’ve seen anything yet. The government is killing the country right now and the hospitality industry is the frontline disaster.”

The paper said the intervention by Mr Caring, a Tory donor who rarely gave interviews, would increase pressure on Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

Mr Caring noted that several countries such as Italy and Greece had reduced the two-metre rule to one and a half metres for restaurants and others such as France to one. “If they can do it elsewhere, why not here?,” he said.

The Caring Foundation, set up by Mr Caring and his wife Patricia has been supplying food to NHS workers, children and people in vulnerable communities.

Down the road there’s a volcano that’s going to bubble over’