Time to set schedule for ending restrictions

LAST Tuesday New York’s Governor Andrew Cuomo lifted almost all coronavirus restrictions on businesses with immediate effect. That means no social distancing in offices or restaurants, and cinemas and theatres operating at full capacity.

His trigger was the vaccination with at least one dose of 70 percent of the adult population. Businesses can adopt precautions of their own if they choose to do so, but the balance of responsibility is shifting back from government to society.

Yesterday, with over 80 per cent of over 16-year-olds in Scotland now having had at least one dose, the First Minister set out the plan for how we might arrive at a similar destination.

However, it seems we have a much more cautious route ahead of us and that has real implications for jobs in our city centres.

To be fair, New York is not currently experiencing a Delta variant impact, although one assumes it will in due course, and there was clear justification both in Scotland and in the wider UK to pause reopening whilst the data on vaccination effectiveness was assessed and more second doses distributed.

Now, with that data emerging, we are told by Public Health England that the Pfizer and Astrazeneca vaccines are respectively 96% and 92% effective against hospitalisation after two doses – and that waiting until July 19 until easing restrictions should allow 70% of the adult population to have received both doses.

Between now and then we should be preparing to make the same transfer in responsibility as New York for managing the virus from government back to society. That means setting a threshold, in the absence of any vaccine-defeating variant, for removing legally enforced social distancing restrictions as much as possible.

As with New York, businesses would then decide for themselves the additional measures they feel are expected by customers, who would choose where they wish to go.

This remains an urgent issue for very many consumer-facing businesses. The most recent data from the Centre for Cities on recovery is not comfortable reading for Glasgow. As of May 31, when Glasgow was suffering badly from the imposition of a travel ban under Level Three rules, the city had recovered only 40% of its pre-pandemic footfall – only London was worse at 38%, all other similarly sized cities were stretching ahead of Glasgow, with Manchester at 48%, Liverpool 59%, Newcastle 62% and Edinburgh 59%.

The damage done by the Glasgow travel ban is especially obvious in the weekend footfall index which usually bounces back more strongly but which dropped from a high of 80% in early May to 54% at the end of the month.

But it is also clear that the return of the office is essential. Only 9% of workers are estimated to be back working in Glasgow city centre. If we are to protect as many of the 30,000 footfall dependent jobs in our city centre as we can we must use the next month to prepare for the re-opening of our offices and our university and college campuses and the loosening of constraints on our nighttime economy.

That the UK Government is showing no interest in extending the timescales for existing business financial support only adds to the pressure.

The Scottish Government struggled to find a mere £769,000 to help the 2,000 businesses in Glasgow hammered by the Level 3 travel ban, so we can assume that there will be no money available if Scotland chooses to keep restrictions in place for longer than the rest of the UK.

This next month is the time for settling when government steps back and society resumes its role.