Return to work stalled by resurgence fears
Government campaign to urge workers back into offices scaled back amid risk to school reopenings
A GOVERNMENT drive to encourage millions of people working at home to go back to the office has been dialled down over concerns of a spike in coronavirus cases, The Sunday Telegraph can disclose.
Ministers are understood to have rowed back on plans to launch a major campaign to urge office workers to return to their desks and start commuting again. They fear any mass return could send infections soaring and threaten the planned return of thousands of children to school over the next few weeks.
Pressure has been mounting on Boris Johnson’s government to return the economy to normal working, with fears that hundreds of city centre businesses could go under because of a lack of the office workers and commuters they normally rely on.
Whitehall sources had last week indicated the Government felt a return to the workplace was overdue, suggesting people might be more vulnerable to losing their jobs if they remained at home. However, government insiders insisted last night that the priority remains ensuring that pupils return to school this week, amid concern that this alone could be enough to force the “R” rate above one.
Instead of pushing for a rapid return to work, one source told The Sunday
Telegraph the Government had always insisted that employees should return only when it is safe to do so.
They added that No10 is “more relaxed about a gradual increase in people returning to the office”, believing that schools reopening will lead to an “organic rise” as parents are freed from childcare commitments. Whitehall sources previously said that a series of new adverts will be published this week, extolling the benefits of office working.
However, government insiders last night insisted that the advertising, which is being co-ordinated by the Cabinet Office, would simply reinforce the “standard messaging” being pushed by ministers for the past six months, insisting they would not contain a “shift in tone or advice”.
It comes after a senior minister told The Telegraph on Thursday that those who continued to work from home would be more vulnerable to the sack.
“There will be some economic consequences of shutdown,” the minister said. “Companies will realise some people weren’t working as hard as they thought … There is going to be a review of how productive people are.”
Trade unions and health experts condemned the briefing, describing it as an attempt to “bully” people into going back to offices and onto mass public transport, with the likely result of undermining attempts at social distancing to reduce the spread of Covid-19.
Grant Shapps, the Transport Secretary, then took to the airways to urge a return to work. In a series of interviews, Mr Shapps said there was “limit, just in human terms, to remote working”. Within hours of Mr Shapps’ interviews a split appeared in the Cabinet, with some ministers voicing their concern that a mass return to work would threaten to undermine a return to schools.
Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, told Times Radio: “What I care about is how effectively people work and obviously people should come back to the office if that is what they need to do their job. And also employers need to make sure the offices are Covid-secure, as we have obviously in the Department for Health, as you would fully expect us to.”
He stressed: “But what I care about is that people perform and so the people I work with, some of them have been working from home, some come in sometimes, some are full-time.”