Fight before Christmas as PM forced to insist parties can go ahead
No10 left scrambling to reassure public after health adviser recommends ‘decreasing social contacts’
EVEN before Dr Jenny Harries had finished touring TV and radio studios yesterday morning, her appearances had stoked feverish speculation that Christmas could be cancelled.
By telling the public to “decrease our social contacts”, the head of the UK Health Security Agency, a familiar face alongside Boris Johnson at Downing Street press conferences, caused panic in the hospitality industry, which has already had Christmas parties scrapped or postponed over the omicron variant.
It left the Prime Minister scrambling to reassure people that parties, nativity plays and Christmas itself would go ahead, but after a day of muddled messaging, some on the Conservative benches claimed that Dr Harries had simply let slip a hidden agenda to “suppress freedom”.
The row started after Dr Harries, who was previously the deputy chief medical officer, told Today on Radio 4 that in light of the variant: “Of course, our behaviours in winter and particularly around Christmas, we tend to socialise more... we’ve seen that not everybody has gone back to work and I’d like to think of it more in a general way, which is if we all decrease our social contacts a little bit, actually that helps to keep the variant at bay.
“So I think being careful, not socialising when we don’t particularly need to and particularly going and getting those booster jabs…”
Coming on the day that mask-wearing in shops and on public transport became mandatory again, her words were seen as a clear sign that the Government – which will have to wait weeks for reliable data on the virulence of omicron – would rather Christmas parties did not go ahead.
At noon, Downing Street insisted in the daily briefing for political journalists that the public should ignore her comments. “Jenny Harries provides advice to Government, she is not a Government minister,” the Prime Minister’s official spokesman said.
There was “no change in our guidance” about socialising, the spokesman added, and “the public should follow the guidance as set out by the Government and indeed the Prime Minister at the weekend”.
That advice had covered masks and foreign travel, but not socialising or working from home.
Mr Johnson himself seemed less sure when he was asked about the issue during a visit to a GP surgery in north London. “I think it’s always sensible to be careful,” he said. “But I think what Jenny is saying there is right. We’ve been living with a pandemic for a long time, people should continue to do things like make sure they have lots of fresh air, they wash their hands and take normal precautions, I think that’s entirely reasonable.”
Although he added that it was not necessary to change the guidance, “what we do need to do is take particular precautions against omicron until we’ve worked out exactly what kind of a threat it may present”.
In Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, working from home has already been advised. In October, the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) said that Plan B measures, including guidance on working from home, should be implemented in unison across the UK to have the biggest effect in tackling any sharp rise in cases.
Out of the individual measures, Sage said working from home would have the biggest impact.
Downing Street has so far refused to reinstate guidance to work from home, in part because of the wider impact on the economy.
Gillian Keegan, the health minister, told Sky News that the Government was “very much hoping that we can keep Christmas on track”.
Maggie Throup, the vaccines minister, did little to convince MPS that ministers were opposed to Dr Harries’s advice when she told the Commons: “We all do enjoy socialising but... we are in a difficult situation at the moment, but we have personal responsibility as well.”
Rachael Maskell, a Labour MP, asked Ms Throup why, when Dr Harries was a “public health professional and therefore really does understand what public health measures need to be taken to secure our wellbeing against this pandemic”, the Government was not listening to her.
Tory backbenchers believed Labour had missed the point. They suspected Dr Harries, who had updated Cabinet on the omicron variant earlier in the day, was being used by ministers to scare the public into cancelling Christmas themselves, without ministers having to take the blame.
Before a vote that rubber-stamped the Government’s plans to increase Covid restrictions, Steve Brine, the Conservative former public health minister,
‘These regulations are part of a scaremongering campaign on the part of the Government’
said: “There’s nothing in these regulations that says you’ve got to cancel Christmas parties, unless Dr Harries, of course, is in charge, but there’s everything in the language and the narrative that’s coming out of Government right now that is causing Christmas parties to be cancelled.”
Sir Christopher Chope, a former minister, said: “These regulations are part of a scaremongering propaganda campaign on the part of the Government, which is really designed to try to stop or restrict social interaction between social animals who happen to be living in the United Kingdom.
“That I think is potentially the most damaging aspect of these regulations before us today.
“They’re designed to suppress freedom of the individual and suppress social contact, and they’re doing that through unreasonable fear-mongering.”
The final word went to Mr Johnson, who addressed the subject on television for the second time in a matter of hours as he hosted a Downing Street press conference. This time, his answers were crisper; when he was asked whether the public should follow Dr Harries’s advice, he said: “The answer is no.”
After the hospitality industry had reported on bookings being cancelled and parents had questioned whether Nativity plays would go ahead, Mr Johnson said: “We don’t want people to cancel such events.”
Working from home was “not currently necessary”, he said, as he encouraged people to take “sensible precautions” such as handwashing and increased ventilation.
“I’m still confident that this Christmas will be considerably better than last Christmas, and that remains my view.”