Furlough returns as lockdown looms again

Sunak to pay staff at firms forced to close as worst-hit areas face business shutdown

RISHI SUNAK has announced a furlough-style scheme to pay workers’ wages, as the country is braced for stricter lockdown restrictions to be imposed from the middle of next week.

Boris Johnson will spend the weekend fine-tuning a traffic light plan to divide England into three tiers according to the severity of local outbreaks of coronavirus.

The Prime Minister is weighing up whether hairdressers and leisure centres should be closed alongside pubs and restaurants in the worst-hit areas. In regions with lower infection rates, he is considering staggering the times that hospitality venues have to close.

It comes amid growing opposition to the 10pm curfew, which will be voted on in the Commons on Tuesday alongside the new lockdown plans, and other tough measures feared to be holding back the economic recovery. Downing Street hopes the new traffic light system will see off a rebellion.

Yesterday, the Chancellor announced that hundreds of millions of pounds a month will be spent paying workers at companies forced to close.

The cash is not limited to pubs, bars and restaurants, leading to fears that ultimately all non-essential businesses could be closed if infection rates are not brought down.

Under the scheme, taxpayers would cover two thirds of the wages of staff at firms that close for up to six months. There is no limit on how much it will cost and staff would no longer have to work part-time to qualify.

Prof Jonathan Van-tam, England’s deputy chief medical officer, told

MPS and peers yesterday that the country was back where it was in March as hospitals filled up with Covid- 19 patients.

A government-backed study said hospital admissions in the North West could be doubling every week. Prof Van-tam said that in the region, intensive care beds were “two to three doubling times” – effectively two to three weeks – away from capacity.

Last night Prof Graham Medley, who sits on Sage, the Government’s scientific advisory panel, also warned that Britain was in a “similar position to early March” and that “thousands will die unless we do something”.

The Government said that, as of 9am yesterday, there had been a further 13,864 lab-confirmed cases in the UK. There are now 3,090 Covid patients in English hospitals. On March 23, the day lockdown was imposed, there were 3,097.

Under the Prime Minister’s plans, to be set out on Monday when he is expected to make a statement to the Commons, England will be partitioned into three tiers from the middle of next week.

The Daily Telegraph understands that hairdressers and leisure venues could join pubs, bars and restaurants in being forced to close in the top tier areas.

The public could be advised not to travel to such areas, although it is not clear if this would be enforced.

Local city leaders are braced for Leeds and Sheffield to join other northern cities like Manchester, Newcastle and Liverpool in tier three, where restrictions are the tightest.

JUST five days ago Boris Johnson was proclaiming that he was a “freedom lovin’ Tory”. This weekend he is signing off on plans for new lockdown restrictions across the north of England.

With a stroke of a pen next week he will be shutting thousands of pubs in areas at greatest risk from coronavirus. As he might have quipped, it was always going to end in tiers.

Mr Johnson is assailed from all quarters this weekend about how to manage the response to this second spike in coronavirus cases. His Cabinet ministers signed off on the plans for a three-tier scheme – nicknamed traffic lights, despite the absence of green or amber – three weeks ago to make sense of the different local lockdown rules.

England will be divided into one of three tiers, each of which will have predetermined restrictions. The challenge for Mr Johnson will be deciding the level of restrictions in those tiers.

Tier one is likely to see people expected to follow the rule of six and maintain social distancing. Tier two could ban households from mixing in homes, gardens, pubs, bars or restaurants. The top tier could see people ordered not to have any social contact with anyone outside their household, together with the expected closures of pubs, bars and restaurants.

Government sources said Mr Johnson now had all the information in his Prime Ministerial red box – it was just a question of him making the final decision about the degree of lockdowns.

A source said: “All the papers have been done and have gone into the box and are to be ruminated on over the weekend.” Another source added: “They are niggling and tweaking about what is what tier”.

Mr Johnson is yet to decide whether to include hairdressers and leisure businesses in the top tier. Hotels could also be excluded from this group. Cities including Leeds and Sheffield could fall into the top tier. There is a debate about whether the tiers should be tightly drawn around larger cities, or include the suburbs where infections are fewer.

There were claims in Whitehall yesterday that different curfew times could apply to different tiers. One source said that in the lower tiers the curfew could be 11pm rather than the blanket 10pm.

But there is no time to waste. Yesterday, MPS and peers were told by Jonathan Van-tam, the deputy chief medical officer, that the situation was “critical” and analogous to where the UK was in early March before the full lockdown.

Jeremy Farrar, a prominent member of Sage, warned that there “needs to be action now” to prevent the pandemic

‘Our hospital admissions are going to be at exactly the same point that they were in the middle of the pandemic’

“spiralling out of control”. A government minister told The Daily Telegraph: “If we don’t do something very quickly, I don’t think we have even until Monday to wait. We are going to be in a position where our hospital admissions are going to be at exactly the same point that they were in the middle of the pandemic.”

Yet the PM knows that the strictest lockdown will be felt in northern seats that the Tories must retain at the next general election. And today, 27 “red wall” Conservatives are launching the Northern Research Group, which will use a combination of research and lobbying to make its case.

Jake Berry, the former Northern Powerhouse minister who founded the group, described it as a “trade union for northern MPS” that will “reinvigorate the Conservative party in the North”.

He told The Week in Westminster on BBC Radio 4 that MPS in the group would “use our collective muscle and bargaining power … to make sure that we get the best possible deal on a pannorthern basis”.

Mark Spencer, the Chief Whip, confirmed yesterday that MPS would be asked to approve the measures with a simple yes/no vote on the floor of the Commons on Tuesday, before they come into force on Wednesday.

A No 10 source said Mr Johnson had to balance the “central conundrum” of protecting local economies with keeping people safe from the virus.

The insider said: “You have to look at the rising numbers of cases of hospitalisations and take steps to protect the NHS not just so people can be treated for Covid but so they can get treatment for all of the other conditions that we would not be able to treat them for.”

It is an unenviable position for Mr Johnson. The source added: “He does not want to have to do this stuff. But there is no alternative.”