‘Give me a break!’ Hancock’s plea in bust-up with Boris

HEALTH Secretary Matt Hancock urged Boris Johnson to ‘give me a break’ in a furious bust-up over the Covid crisis.

The row – which raises questions over the beleaguered Minister’s Cabinet future – can be revealed as the Prime Minister prepares to use a televised address to the nation this evening to set out his roadmap for easing the lockdown.

His plans include introducing a five-stage alert system – similar to that used to highlight the chances of a terrorist attack – to signal the risk of infection in different parts of the country.

While a green Level One alert would mean life carrying on normally, a red Level Five means the NHS is on the brink of being overwhelmed.

No 10 is also preparing to launch a new slogan – ‘stay alert, control the virus, save lives’ – to replace advice to stay at home, indicating a move to less draconian restrictions.

But the Government will take a cautious approach after advisers warned Covid-19 is ‘ripping through care homes’.

A surge in the R-number, which measures how quickly the virus is spreading, came in a ‘chilling briefing’ from the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) to the Cabinet. A source said: ‘Sage say we are one wrong move away from R going back to where it was in March.’

Pressure intensified on Mr Hancock over his handling of the crisis last night after more than 25million goggles were found to offer NHS staff inadequate defence against the virus.

The latest in a string of Government failures over personal protective equipment came as senior sources suggested Mr Hancock was now living ‘on borrowed time’ in the Cabinet.

A source claimed that the PM had raised questions with Mr Hancock about his grip on the crisis, only for the Minister to plead: ‘That’s not fair – give me a break.’

The 25.6million pairs of Tiger Eye goggles bought for the NHS are not fit for purpose, said the British Standards Institute: 15.9 million have been distributed, with hospitals told to remove the rest from use.

During another weekend of dramatic developments:

● Mr Johnson is expected to confirm garden centres will be able to open south of the Border from Wednesday. In Scotland, centre bosses are planning a revolt against Nicola Sturgeon’s refusal to follow suit;

● The UK death toll rose by 346 to 31,587, with 36 more in Scotland. Globally, there have been more than 276,000 killed;

● Airports and travel firms reacted with fury to plans to impose two weeks’ quarantine on anyone arriving in the UK;

● Actress Miriam Margolyes faced fury for saying she had hoped Mr Johnson would die from coronavirus;

● It emerged the UK Government flew 50,000 virus tests to America last week as it struggled to hit its daily target.

Mr Hancock’s spokesman said the goggles had been ordered by Gordon Brown’s Labour Government in 2009.

But a senior Government source said: ‘The feeling is that Hancock is on borrowed time. Once we have beaten this thing, expect him to be moved.’

A source close to Mr Hancock admitted tensions had run high but said ‘the PM was full of praise’ for the Minister.

THE British people need some sunshine, some reason to hope, something to look forward to – and they need it now.

As the Prime Minister considers the words he will speak this evening, he must bear in mind that even the tough, patient citizens of this country cannot survive for ever in a twilight of restraint, rules and stern lectures.

It is not as if, given some more freedoms, we will suddenly turn into thoughtless anarchists, wilfully undoing all the good we have achieved over weeks of self-isolation, social distancing and separation.

This incident might be a good parable of the national attitude: In a major British park, an ice-cream van appears, playing its chimes. From all across the huge green space, scores of delighted would-be customers converge on the van.

When they reach it, they form an orderly and good-tempered queue, universally staying 6ft apart without anyone needing to chivvy or reprove them. This true story is an illustration of how common sense is better than too much finger-wagging enforcement. It is also a sign of a reasonable desire to return to some of the simple pleasures of life, a desire it would be unwise for any government to ignore.

There has been a puritanical aspect to rather too much of the lockdown, with people being chided not so much because their actions threaten to spread the virus, but because they look as if they might be enjoying themselves. This must end. The move to reopen garden centres in most of the UK apart from Scotland seems to be under way at last, though it is very hard to understand why it has taken so long to end this closure.

Many similar actions, in such places as covered and open-air markets, are also long overdue.

And Ministers really should act to start reopening the schools. Some of the education unions are behaving with extraordinary selfishness.

They have for years argued correctly that education is a vital national resource and no effort should be spared to strengthen it. How can they now resist reopening, with sensible precautions, when almost all experts agree that the risk of transmission of Covid-19 in schools is remarkably low? Huge numbers of young people are being deprived of schooling that cannot ever be fully replaced, and – as always – it is the most underprivileged who suffer most from this loss.

Yet there is no sense of a government either getting a grip or trusting the people.

Most unwisely, briefings last week suggested a major relaxation was on the way – and then expectations had to be damped down. It is extraordinarily unwise for a government to raise hopes only to dash them.

And the plan to quarantine arrivals from abroad seems astonishingly inept. For weeks, when the virus was spreading rapidly, thousands of people have flowed in through our airports unimpeded.

Why bring in such a regime now, when its main effect will be to destroy any hope of a revival of the travel industry?

There is a sense of one hand not knowing what the other is doing.

And in the background the economy continues to suffer and the Government’s gigantic spending continues to pile up, with consequences economists can only guess at, but which are bound to be harsher the longer we wait to get the country back to work.

Caution is all very well. But it can be overdone. There are also times when boldness is justified, and this is one of them.