Reports:

Health Secretary wades in on live TV as No10 and City Hall trade blows over regulations

‘Transport for London should have the Tube running in full so travellers are spaced out’

Robert Mendick, Jack Hardy, Gordon Rayner Charles Hymas MATT HANCOCK took a swipe at the Mayor of London last night for failing to run a full Tube train service in a row over packed carriages putting key health workers in danger.

The Health Secretary’s intervention came at the end of a dramatic day in which Boris Johnson and Sadiq Khan blamed each other for overcrowded trains across the capital.

Meanwhile, Mr Khan revealed he had pleaded with the Prime Minister to shut down construction sites over fears builders are spreading coronavirus at work and on public transport – but was overruled by Mr Johnson at a Cobra emergency meeting on Monday.

Yesterday, he accused Mr Johnson of “moving too slowly” to curtail the Covid-19 spread.

The new crackdown announced by Mr Johnson on Monday appeared to be undermined by his insistence that builders, although not key workers, could carry on working regardless.

Under the Downing Street rules, people can leave the house if they are “travelling to and from work, but only where this absolutely cannot be done from home”. That seems to have given the green light for builders, cleaners and others to continue work as normal.

By contrast, construction sites have been shut down in Scotland on the orders of Nicola Sturgeon.

On the first day of the most stringent lockdown since the Second World War, health workers in London were forced to go to work on crowded trains and buses because of a sharp reduction in public transport.

One hospital health worker told The Daily Telegraph she was appalled at the danger, and pleaded with Mr Johnson and Mr Khan to institute a ban on nonessential workers using the Tube.

Transport for London (TFL) which runs London Underground, said it did not have the capability or the powers to enforce such a ban.

Mr Hancock waded into the row between Downing Street and City Hall by insisting that Mr Khan ensure trains run to a normal timetable that would give workers the chance to keep a safe distance on the Tube.

TFL cut services right back last week, insisting the Tube should only be used by “critical” workers, such as nurses and doctors, and made further reductions yesterday after almost a third of staff went off sick or into self-isolation.

In the Government’s daily televised press conference, Mr Hancock – in a direct criticism of Mr Khan, who is in overall charge of public transport in the capital – said: “The first and the best answer is that Transport for London should have the Tube running in full so that people travelling are spaced out and can be further apart – obeying the two-metre rule wherever possible.

“There is no good reason in the information that I’ve seen that the current levels of Tube provision should be as low as they are. We should have more Tube trains running.”

The Prime Minister has also told Mr Khan to put on more trains while Grant Shapps, the Transport Secretary, said he had requested from the mayor measures “to ensure the safety of those who need to use it”.

In a further sign of tension, Kit Malthouse, the policing minister and a former deputy mayor of London when Mr Johnson ran City Hall, was put in charge of a new committee within the

Home Office to tackle the growing crisis in London, the epicentre of the UK coronavirus.

And Mr Shapps posted on Twitter: “[I] spoke today to the Mayor of London re crowded Tubes. We need enough trains for those who must travel with enough space to be safe.”

Mr Shapps said one option was to bring drivers and signallers out of retirement “to assist in this great national effort to beat coronavirus”.

Mr Khan blamed Downing Street for the overcrowding by not shutting down construction sites in London and failing to offer a compensation deal to low-paid, self-employed workers that would keep them at home.

He spoke in a radio interview of his plea at the Cobra meeting, adding: “I was overruled by the Prime Minister who doesn’t believe that construction workers should be at home. The Prime Minister believes construction workers should be going to work and they