Ministers who spoke of a Covid ‘punishment beating’ for region named
THE government ministers and officials who spoke of a ‘punishment beating’ for Greater Manchester during the pandemic when local leaders resisted tougher Covid restrictions without adequate funding have been named.
Andy Burnham’s behaviour during his stand-off with the government in autumn 2020 was described as ‘appalling’ at the meeting attended by the UK’S top politicians and advisers.
The Greater Manchester mayor revealed some of the contents of the minutes from that meeting when he appeared at the Covid inquiry last month.
The minutes from the Covid-o cabinet committee meeting he referred have now been published by the inquiry.
The meeting took place on October 15, 2020 – one week before Tier 3 measures were forced on Greater Manchester despite the government failing to reach an agreement over a financial support package for businesses and staff affected.
In the meeting, it was suggested that Lancashire should have a lighter set of measures imposed because leaders there ‘showed willingness to cooperate’.
It was also proposed that the tougher measures should be imposed on Greater Manchester ‘that day’. However, negotiations between local leaders and the government continued until October 20 when Mr Burnham was informed dramatically during a press conference in Manchester city centre that the city-region would get around a third of the funding requested after councils agreed to contribute towards some of the costs.
Greater Manchester had asked for £90m to support businesses and staff affected by the Tier 3 measures, but later dropped the request to £65m. The mayor had been arguing that workers who were furloughed should get more support than what was offered.
But during the press conference outside Bridgewater Hall, Mr Burnham was informed by Manchester Central MP Lucy Powell that health secretary Matt
Hancock told her the new rules would be imposed on the city-region that night with only £22m offered in support.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson later confirmed the Tier 3 measures would be imposed in Greater Manchester from midnight.
At the time, workers who were unable to work due to the restriction were entitled to 67 per cent of their salary through the furlough scheme. But the following week, when the Prime Minister announced another national lockdown, the full 80 per cent was restored.
The Covid-o minutes that have now been published reveal that Edward Lister, the Prime Minister’s chief strategic adviser, told the cabinet committee that Greater Manchester’s leaders were arguing that local measures would not work and called for a national lockdown. However, members of the committee continued to call for local measures to be imposed on the cityregion regardless.
The Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, argued
that Manchester should be placed in Tier 3 by the weekend with ‘the full panoply of measures’ because the ‘uncertainty could not continue’. Mr Johnson said that the deal needed to be ‘concluded forthwith’ and it was agreed that the Prime
Minister would call Mr Burnham to ‘explain the need for action’.
In a series of remarks that were not attributed to any individuals on the committee, the mayor was said to have been ‘behaving appallingly’, claiming he would not agree to any
package of financial support and that ‘there was nothing the government could do to secure his support’.
It was also argued that ‘there would be problems’ if the Liverpool City Region ended up with a worse deal than Greater Manchester having negotiated with the government ‘in good faith’ and that Lancashire should have a ‘lighter’ set of measured imposed since local leaders there had shown ‘willingness to cooperate’.
The minutes also reveal that members of the committee suggested that data about the infection rate should ‘continue to be made available’ in Greater Manchester’s media to ‘apply public pressure to local leaders to act’.
It was also suggested that local leaders were ‘out of step’ with people in the region and that they were not ‘subject to the same level of scrutiny’ as politicians in government.
Speaking at the Covid inquiry on November 27, Mr Burnham described the comments made at the Covid-o meeting as ‘nothing short of disgraceful’.
He accused members of the cabinet committee of talking about a ‘punishment beating’ for Greater Manchester.
The minutes of the meeting, which have now been published by the Covid inquiry, reveal that the meeting was attended by five ministers – Boris Johnson, Rishi Sunak, Michael Gove, Matt Hancock and Robert Jenrick – as well as the UK’S chief scientific adviser Patrick Vallance, chief medical officer Chris Whitty and his deputy Jonathan Vantam.
The Prime Minister’s chief strategic adviser Edward Lister, his private secretary Imran Shafi, and his special adviser Henry Cook were also in attendance as well as the Covid task force’s director general Kate Josephs, director Helen Dickinson and Dido Harding, who chaired NHS Test and Trace. Dr Catherine Cutts, who was the chief data scientist at No 10 Downing Street is also listed as an attendee, alongside a Rosie Bate-williams, a communications officer from No 10, an unnamed senior press officer from the Prime Minister’s office and an unnamed senior policy adviser from the treasury.
Dr Clare Gardiner, the Director General of the Joint Biosecurity Centre also attended the meeting, as well as four people who are listed as ‘secretariat’.