PM TAKES CHARGE ON 2 METRES
As top restaurant boss warns of 2 million job losses
BORIS JOHNSON today paves the way for the abolition of the two-metre separation rule by taking personal control of the decision to axe it.
His crucial intervention comes as one of the country’s leading restaurateurs warns that if it is not scrapped, the hospitality sector will be hit by millions of job losses.
The Mail on Sunday can reveal that the Prime Minister has commissioned a comprehensive No 10 review which will effectively wrest control of Covid-19 social distancing guidance from Government scientists – and, critically, allow the devastating economic impact of the measure to be taken into account for the first time.
One Government source said the move was recognition that ‘there is more to life than the R number’ – the term for the rate at which the infection spreads.
Last night, Tory MPs predicted that the review – to be run by Downing Street’s newly appointed Permanent Secretary, Simon Case
‘The Government’s killing the country right now’
– would provide a road map for the two- metre rule to be relaxed in time for the reopening of pubs on July 4.
It comes as Richard Caring, the business man whose empire includes the J Sheekey restaurant in London and The Ivy chain, tells this newspaper that expecting people to stay more than two metres apart is ‘killing the country’.
In a rare interview, Mr Caring accuses Mr Johnson of ‘weakness and indecision’, and said Ministers had grossly underestimated the permanent damage being done to Britain’s 26,000 restaurants.
Unless the rule is relaxed, Mr Caring warns, as many as ‘50 or 60 percent’ of the four-million hospitality workers in Britain could be laid off when the Government’s furlough scheme comes to an end in the autumn.
Mr Caring, a Tory Party donor, adds: ‘This volcano, unless we wake up to it now, it’s going to be horrendous. It’s just going to explode, spewing out unemployed people. The pain and suffering it is going to cause is horrific.
‘There are estimates saying we could have up to five million unemployed. 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 actually killing the country right now and the hospitality industry is in the front line of the disaster’.
The insistence of the Government’s Scientific Advisory Group on Emergencies (Sage) on maintaining the two- metre rule has caused an intense political backlash, with Tory MPs and the Treasury joining forces to express concern about the economic damage it is wreaking.
Figures released last week showed the economy suffered a 20 per cent drop in GDP in April, the largest ever monthly collapse.
Chancellor Rishi Sunak told the party’s backbench 1922 Committee last week that three-quarters of pubs could open if the distance was cut to one metre, and cited the fact that 24 countries had introduced the flexibility to reduce it. The infection rate in the community has dropped to just 0.06 per cent, while a further 181 people died in the UK in the last 24- hour period to be announced after testing positive for Covid-19.
Researchers found that there is a 1.3 per cent chance of contracting the virus when standing two metres away from an infected person; a figure that only increases to 2.6 per cent when separated by one metre.
The current ‘R’ rate is between 0.7 and 0.9: any number below 1 means that the spread of the virus is decreasing.
Mr Johnson’s new review will take advice from a range of experts, including the Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty and Chief Scientific Adviser Sir Patrick Vallance – but also behavioural scientists and economists. It will operate in addition to a rolling review of the guidance being carried out by Sage.
The review will look at evidence about transmission in different environments and what is being done in other countries.
Its findings, expected within weeks, will be reported to the Covid Strategy Committee, chaired by Mr Johnson, and comprising Mr Sunak, Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, Cabinet Office Minister Michael Gove and Health Secretary Matt Hancock.
A senior Government source said last night: ‘ This is Boris – and Downing Street – taking control of the process, and this time there will be evidence from economists as well as scientists.
‘It should provide a road map to unlock the economy by the time the hospitality industry reopens on July 4. This is a significant moment’.
And senior Tories took the move as a clear signal that No 10 was preparing to relax the guidance.
Former Cabinet Minister Damian Green said: ‘ This sounds really encouraging. I am delighted that the Prime Minister is taking personal control of this.
‘Moving from two metres to one metre is the single biggest act that the Government could take to save hundreds of thousands of jobs.’
A Downing Street spokesman said: ‘Our progress in fighting coronavirus depends on everyone following the rules we have set out.
‘This comprehensive review will examine how the two-metre rule works in practice, the scientific evidence and international comparisons, among other factors’.