Why Liverpool won’t accept lockdown on the cheap
The last seven months of the Covid-19 crisis and the consequences have hit Liverpool really hard. Many businesses have closed and many people have lost their jobs. It’s been a difficult time for families and individuals. We are now seeing the true impact of the austerity measures: cuts to public health, our NHS and local government over the last 11 years start to bite, with a clear correlation between the highest Covid infection areas and those of disadvantage.
I believe things are still going to get worse. I say this because my fears about where we are heading over the next six months are now beginning to really scare me. Talks over the weekend with government have been far from ideal – especially when you feel you are not being listened to. So yes, I welcome the fact that Liverpool is being placed in the highest tier in this new system to control the coronavirus.
We need to impose restrictions to save lives. But – and this can’t be stressed enough – not without compensation to save livelihoods. As I’ve told the health secretary and the prime minister’s office, this is going to hit my city the hardest, and at precisely the worst possible time.
Liverpool – the city which has lost almost half a billion pounds in government support since the start of the decade. The city which has already seen a 38-fold rise in unemployment in the hospitality sector compared to last year. The city which has seen more than 300 leisure and tourism businesses fold since March. And by Christmas we could see more than 20,000 people made unemployed.
For all the talk of levelling up the north, it has now become crystal clear that talk is all it has been. Well, warm words are cold comfort for a city and its citizens staring economic meltdown in the face. People talk about us facing a winter of discontent. My fear is that is if we don’t get the economic support package right, we’re looking at a decade of despair.
And I did not get into politics to sow despair. That is why over the past 48 hours I, and the other leaders around the region, have been fighting tooth and nail to explain to the government what is at stake here. Yes – we need to control the virus. I’ve been saying this for the past four weeks, when the figures started to show a spike. Today, the city’s infection rate is 608 per 100,000 and if we don’t limit social contact the number of infections will surpass the peak we saw in the first lockdown in April.
We cannot allow an economic package that condemns this city to return to a 1980s level of unemployment
We also have more hospital admissions than other areas. Many of Manchester’s Covid infections are among students who are much less likely to be hospitalised – our cases are ending up in hospital. And it’s not limited to a particular area. This is right across the city.
So I repeat: We need to impose restrictions to save lives. But not without compensation to save livelihoods. The government needs to honour the 80 per cent furlough level. It is as simple as that. Many in the hospitality sector are already on a low wage. To ask them to take 66 per cent is an insult to those who can least afford it. And to hear that from a government which is about to rubber stamp a £3,000 a year pay rise for MPs is a just complete kick in the gut.
To place people on universal credit will actually cost more, given that people won’t be taking incoming tax or national insurance. Equally, we can’t afford businesses to fold because the loss of income from business rates will push council finances over a cliff. In Liverpool, 48 per cent of our business rates come from the hospitality sector. That’s why I have made it absolutely clear to government until I’m blue in the face: lockdown, yes; on the cheap, no. We cannot allow an economic package that condemns this city to return to a 1980s level of unemployment.
This city has spent the past two decades reinventing itself to the point that is now one of the fastest growing economies in the UK and one of the most popular visitor destinations. We are not prepared to throw all that progress away simply because this government tells us “it’s not for negotiation”. We will not accept such measures by diktat. Interestingly, the government has woken up to the fact that test and trace is best
handled at a local level, as we proved in August in Princes Park ward.
So we welcome those measures, as I do the acceptance of my suggestion for the army to help with the logistics. I just hope the government accepts the argument that people’s lives and livelihoods cannot be decided by a formula, cooked up by some unelected advisers in Whitehall.
I will fight tooth and nail to convince them otherwise. At a time of crisis, people need hope. It is the best medicine those in power can supply.