Campaign to get Britain back to work flounders

Divisions over office social distancing, home working in Whitehall – and lack of a slogan

BORIS JOHNSON’S drive to get workers back to the office has been postponed amid warnings that the Government’s own social distancing guidelines prevent firms from getting all of their staff back to their desks.

A public information campaign encouraging people to return to their workplaces was scheduled to begin tomorrow, but will now not start until next week at the earliest.

It came after a senior Bank of England official warned that Covid-safe guidelines meant offices could not be used with the usual “intensity”, meaning companies were missing out on the “efficiency, collaboration and creativity” that came with office working.

The Cabinet Office – in charge of the media push – wants more civil servants to be back at their desks before ministers tell others to do the same.

There are fears in Government and among business leaders that firms that depend on trade from office workers will go to the wall if home working becomes a permanent way of life.

No campaign slogan has been agreed and there are divisions in Downing Street and among ministers about how strong the message should be.

It came as figures showed just a small rise in public transport use on Tuesday, the first day of the new school year.

In the latest government aboutturns, Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, yesterday reversed a decision to ease local lockdown restrictions in Bolton and Trafford, while Portugal was set to return to the quarantine “red list” two weeks after it was taken off it.

Mr Johnson warned backbench MPS yesterday that “it’s about to get tougher” as Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor, made it clear there would be tax rises to foot the bill for coronavirus.

Despite children returning to school this week, most Whitehall buildings are well below capacity, and the Government is wary of campaigning before it has its own house in order.

Mr Johnson is understood to be keen to send out a strong message that it is time to get back to the office, but some aides are urging caution after a recent rise in the infection rate.

The Prime Minister expressed frustration with colleagues who are home working, telling Geraint Davies, the Labour MP, via video call in the Commons that he should “return from New York, Shanghai or wherever he is and join us in this House as fast as he can”. He later told Tory MPS he wanted Parliament to be “back to normal” by Christmas.

A recent rise in the R rate, which measures the spread of infection, has concerned some aides, who want to wait for more evidence of the effect on R of schools reopening before sending out a strong back-to-work message. One senior minister said: “The Prime Minister is keen to push on with this but I’m not sure everyone around him is.”

Mr Hancock undermined the backto-work message last week when he said he cared only about how effective people were, not where they worked.

More hawkish Cabinet ministers fear the country is sleepwalking into an unemployment catastrophe due to the shift to home working. One minister said: “We need to get people back to their offices, especially in London and other city centres, otherwise pubs, restaurants and other businesses that rely on trade from office workers are going to close, and very soon.”

Alex Brazier, a Bank of England financial policymaker, told MPS government guidelines prevented a mass return to office working. He said: “With

Covid-safe guidelines it is not possible to use office space with the intensity we used to use it, so it is not possible to bring lots of people back suddenly.

“There are merits to working in an office when it comes to efficiency and collaboration and creativity, but because of those constraints I don’t think we can expect to see a sudden and sharp return of people to very dense office environments.”

The number of train passengers on Tuesday remained at only 38 per cent of pre-covid levels, up from 31 per cent last Friday, industry sources said.

In London, Tube travel was up just 2.2 per cent on the previous week and is still 67 per down on last year, while bus journeys increased by 8 per cent, 45 per cent down on last year.

Many firms have told staff not to return until next year, while others are limiting the number of workers.

The back-to-work campaign will involve advertisements in newspapers highlighting the benefits of returning to workplaces. However, Government communications chiefs have yet to agree a slogan to match the simplicity of lockdown’s Stay At Home message.

The Cabinet Office has written to Whitehall departments demanding to know how many staff are back at their desks and what ministers and officials are doing to get the numbers up.

The Cabinet Office is understood to be concerned about sending ministers on to the airwaves to promote the backto-work message without them being able to say their own departments are at maximum Covid-safe capacity.

The Government faces strong opposition from unions representing civil servants. Yesterday Dave Penman, the FDA union general secretary, said: “Marching tens of thousands of workers back into offices and on to public transport, when they can work perfectly well from home, is the last thing we need at the moment.”