The battle for Alfresco April
● Rows behind the scenes over how soon to open up the battered hospitality trade ● Hancock told: One more gaffe like10-year jail term f iasco and PM will f ire you
THE simmering Tory tensions over lockdown came to a head in spectacular fashion last week when venerable backbencher Sir Charles Walker encountered Health Secretary Matt Hancock in the Commons.
Sir Charles passionately believes that measures to limit the spread of the virus risk causing more harm than they prevent, particularly in terms of mental health; Mr Hancock has consistently argued that the protection of the NHS should be the over-arching priority.
Sir Charles was enraged by the chaos over messages from Mr Hancock and Transport Secretary Grant Shapps over whether people should book a summer holiday – and by the decision to impose a ten-year jail sentence on people who flout strict new quarantine rules, a rule introduced without MPs getting a chance to vote on it
So when Mr Hancock addressed a private meeting of the backbench 1922 Committee, of which Sir Charles is vicechairman, he let rip at the Cabinet Minister, telling him that the Prime Minister’s ‘legs have been cut from underneath him as a result of the interventions’ by Mr Hancock and Mr Shapps, adding: ‘If the PM is let down again by his Secretaries of State, he should remove them from Cabinet’.
With ‘vaccines coming out of our ears’, as Sir Charles has put it, impatience on the party’s backbenches is growing.
By last night, a total of 63 Tory MPs had signed a letter from the party’s Covid Recovery Group urging a swift exit from lockdown – easily enough to wipe out the Prime Minister’s majority if they voted with Labour. Their views were summed up with the line: ‘The vaccine gives us immunity from Covid but it must also give us permanent
‘Vaccines have to give us immunity from lockdown’
immunity from Covid-related lockdowns and restrictions’.
While the increasingly powerful group looks likely to be granted its wish for all pupils to be allowed to return to the classrooms on March 8, the issue which has most divided the Cabinet has been the fate of the hospitality industry – and specifically whether outside dining at pubs and restaurants should be allowed in April.
Last night, senior Government sources indicated that the group’s demand for what’s been dubbed ‘alfresco April’ to start at Easter, the weekend of April 4, was also likely to be met.
But the divide between the economic ‘hawks’ pushing for as much commercial activity as can be safely allowed – led by Chancellor Rishi Sunak – and the more cautious doves’ has opened up again.
Mr Hancock and Cabinet Office Minister Michael Gove led calls to wait until late April or May to reopen the hospitality industry,
‘Uncertainty doesn’t mean we have no plan’
arguing that it would be wrong to ‘casually dine al fresco’ until the data was clearer on the vaccine’s impact on transmission.
But the hand of the hawks has been strengthened by new data indicating that the Pfizer vaccine starts to work in as little as two weeks, reducing the symptomatic infection by around 65 per cent in both young adults and the over-80s. Data on post-vaccine transmission levels could be presented to the Prime Minister as soon as tomorrow.
Mr Sunak was joined by International Trade Secretary Liz Truss and Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng in calling for a fast easing of lockdown.
One source said: ‘The difference between the two camps amounts to about three weeks – basically between the beginning of April or the end.’
And a Minister added: ‘We are in the endgame now. Firemen damping down a blaze always stay longer after it’s out. You don’t want the fire smouldering and then reigniting. We’re all firemen in the Cabinet. We want to put the fire out, but won’t stop [lockdown] until we are absolutely convinced that it is’.
No 10 has been angered by the
perception that they have been ‘held captive’ by over-cautious scientists on the Sage group of advisers. One source said: ‘It is not true. We are all working as hard as we can to get back to normal. Do not confuse uncertainty for lack of a plan’.
A handful of Ministers and scientific advisers have been drawing up the ‘road map’ for Boris Johnson to unveil this month, with the wider Cabinet likely to be talked through its broad points in advance of the announcement on February 22.
With Mr Johnson’s target of vaccinating the most vulnerable 15 million people by tomorrow within reach, the Prime Minister has ordered a celebratory‘ star burst ’– a blitz of Ministerial visits–to target vaccination centres in a final push to encourage all vulnerable people to get the jab.
The drive includes a renewed effort to persuade care home workers to take up the jab by ‘appealing to their altruism and public service’, emphasising it not only protects them, but the people they work with.
But the pressure on the Government over the economic impact continues to mount from the backbenches: just yesterday, Nickie Aiken, the Tory MP for Westminster, says theatres i n London’s West End had warned t hat t hey needed between four and five months’ notice before reopening, while, former Tory leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith said the hospitality industry needed at least a month to gear up.
Sir Charles has become ar allying point for ba ck benchd iscontent. He declined to comment on any remarks made behind closed doors at the 1922 Committee, but he told The Mail on Sunday that introducing the ten-year jail penalty without allowing proper debate in the Commons was a ‘really low and underhand thing to do’.
He said: ‘The idea that we are going to lock people up for ten years in a prison system already full to bursting is just not credible’.
One Tory MP said privately: ‘Charles has a very good point. The absurd ten-year jail sentence stuff undermines our credibility and saying no summer holidays for people was pretty demoralising.’
But a government source defended Mr Hancock and Mr Shapps, saying ‘enhanced border measures’ were vital and that it was only wise to be cautious about booking holidays.
‘It was a really low and underhand thing to do’