THE ONLY CITY TO GO INTO LOCKDOWN?
MAYOR SAYS THEY WILL HELP OTHERS AVOID MASS RESTRICTIONS, BUT
NEW powers that allow councils to shut down venues and services if there is a local coronavirus outbreak should have been available to Leicester three or four weeks ago, says the city mayor.
These new powers might mean other cities escape a city-wide lockdown.
Sir Peter Soulsby said that had the new legislation that came into place this weekend been available earlier, a Leicester lockdown would not have been necessary.
Prior to the local lockdown being extended for another fortnight last week, the mayor made his case to the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) to target the 10 per cent of the city where rates are highest rather than include the whole city.
He told the Mercury he hopes the way things have played out in Leicester will mean other areas do not suffer the same fate.
“It shows we’ve won the argument – you don’t need to lock a whole city and the surrounding areas down,” he claimed.
“We’ve said that all along and the fact that the government has introduced this legislation backs us up.
“In one sense I’m pleased that it shows they’ve listened to us but they would never have needed to take the sledgehammer to the city that they have if we had these powers three or four weeks ago.
“If they had just given us these powers sooner we wouldn’t have needed the lockdown.”
Announcing the new measures, which will see councils be able to close shops, cancel events and shut outdoor public spaces from Friday, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said:
“It has to be right that we take local action in response to local outbreaks. There is no point shutting down a city in one part of the country to contain an outbreak in another part of the country.”
Local authorities will also be able to advise people in certain postcodes to stay home and target specific advice and measures in areas where rates are deemed too high.
Asked if he believes Leicester will be the first and last to have a city-wide lockdown, Sir Peter said: “I think they have made such a hash of doing it in Leicester and there’s been such a strong reaction to something as crude as this that they are desperate not to have the same thing repeated in other areas
“It’s a pain for us in Leicester but hopefully the fact that this has happened here will mean it won’t happen elsewhere and to other councils.” But Baroness Dido Harding, chief executive of NHS Test and Trace, told the Mercury that the same thing could yet happen elsewhere.
Speaking exclusively to this newspaper, she said: “I wouldn’t want to ever rule out another city-wide lockdown, but the point of the powers is to allow local authorities to make more targeted decisions.”
She said she hoped that the legislation would prevent the need for lockdowns on the same scale as in Leicester.
Asked if she thought the way the Leicester lockdown has been handled would be replicated elsewhere, Baroness Harding said: “It’s better than doing something like the original lockdown, the national lockdown.”
Admitting the boundary had been a “contentious” issue, she said: “You have to draw a boundary and wherever you draw it there will be people included that feel it is unfair.
“Clinicians can draw a boundary of where the disease is, but the virus doesn’t follow the geography of where we live and work.
“When you treat a cancer you know where the boundary of that cancer is, but you need to also allow room around it so it doesn’t spread.”
Baroness Harding said the line was drawn on the map by the city and county council leaders, because “sat in London as experts, it’s something we would have likely got wrong, that (the boundary decision) needed to be locally led”.
The new powers cannot yet be