Telegraph puts Government on the spot at coronavirus briefing
OUR REPORTER RAISES CONCERNS OVER CITY JOBS & SCHOOLS:
THE Telegraph has put the concerns of tens of thousands of workers to the Prime Minister as the region begins to emerge from the coronavirus lockdown.
Uncertainty hangs over the future of the car industry with calls for Government to step in and support major employer Jaguar Land Rover (JLR).
The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the global supply chain has led to intense pressures on the automotive industry. But many other companies are also feeling the strain as the burden of the shutdown hits home and combines with existing pressures on the high street.
Questioning the Prime Minister at yesterday’s Downing Street daily briefing, Telegraph reporter JOSH LAYTON asked Boris Johnson: “Coronavirus has already taken a bigger toll on the UK than anywhere else in Europe – what specific reassurances can you give workers in Coventry, especially in the manufacturing sector, who are fearing we will have the worst economic fallout as well?”
Boris Johnson said Coventry and the West Midlands were at the forefront of the first automotive revolution and the region was making headway with the green vehicle revolution. The Prime Minister said: “In Coventry and the West Midlands a huge number of businesses have received grant payments, around £42m in Coventry and businesses and enterprises in the West Midlands.
“Around 85 per cent of eligible businesses in the West Midlands have received funding.
“What we want to drive forward as we come out of this epidemic, as we bounce back, I want to see a lot more going into green technology, green batteries, green motor vehicles, low carbon vehicles of all kinds andwe have for instance we’ve just put £108m into the the UK Battery Industrialisation Centre which is due to open later this year.
“The West Midlands was the home of the original automotive revolution that’s where it all began, the internal combustion engine, and already in the West Midlands you’re seeing an incredible profusion of low carbon technology, low carbon vehicles.
“That’s what we want to champion. That’s the future.”
Josh also asked the government’s chief scientific and medical officers if parents were right to keep children off school given the Covid-19 alert status remains at level four.
Schools were told by the government they could begin to accept pupils back from Monday.
But many across Coventry and Warwickshire are yet to open more widely though they still remain open to the children of key workers. Josh asked: “Professor Whitty and Sir Patrick, many parents in Coventry and Warwickshire are telling us that they are refusing to send their children back to school at the moment. With the UK still at alert level four, doesn’t the science say they are right to keep their children away?”
Professor Chris Whitty said his answer was the same as any doctor’s advice to parents that he would provide them with the positives and negatives of the situation.
He said: “On parents not wanting to send their children to school, which I think anyone can understand why parents are thinking about this very hard, I’m going to give and answer as you would a doctor. You say there are things that are risks, there are things that are benefits and you’ve got to understand when is the right time where the risks and benefits have some sort of balancing out.
“Children not having their education is potentially a huge disadvantage to them for the rest of their lives. Set against that is going to school in an epidemic.”
He went on to highlight the risks to children from Covid-19 are low and that other infections target children more than coronavirus.
He also said parents of primary aged children are not in the age group of those at risk of coronavirus.
Professor Whitty said there was a complicated balancing act for society on reducing the spread of infection and ensuring children are educated.
He said: “We are trying to walk between two risks, a risk to education and a risk to health. The rates of infection are much lower now than when schools closed.”