Sunak prepares the country for a long Covid lockdown

This is the latest evening briefing for Reaction subscribers. Become a subscriber here.

The furlough scheme will be extended until the end of March for businesses forced to shut down by national or local restrictions, in a sign that the government expects lockdowns to continue across the UK well into 2021. “The government will continue to help pay people’s wages, up to 80 per cent of the normal amount. All employers will have to pay for hours not worked is the cost of employers NICs and pension contributions,” Chancellor Rishi Sunak said in the Commons today.

As a result of the furlough extension, the £1,000-per-head job retention bonus, designed to incentivise firms to keep employees in work through Christmas, will be scrapped. Companies that had factored it into their cash flow will now have to make up a financial hole in the tens, potentially hundreds, of thousands.

These are the latest in a series of U-turns by Sunak since his Winter Economy plan of 24 September. Back then, Sunak spoke in terms of incentivising a sharp economic recovery. Now, the focus is on dialling up government support with economic activity expected to be severely restricted until spring 2021 at the earliest.

To be fair to Sunak, his U-turns have been forced by failures outside his purview. The government had months to organise an efficient mass testing and contact tracing system to minimise restrictions in the winter, when both Covid and flu cases were expected to rise. We all locked down to give them the capacity to organise such an infrastructure, but still it failed. The system virtually collapsed at the first hurdle, and now we are back to where we were in March 2020.

“What I know is today’s announcement will give people and businesses, up and down our country, immense comfort over what will be a difficult winter,” the Chancellor ended his statement.

Vallance faces the heat

The UK Statistics Authority has written to Sir Patrick Vallance, the government’s Chief Scientific Adviser, questioning the data being presented to the public in Downing Street’s coronavirus press briefings. Graphs showing deaths soaring “have not consistently been supported by transparent information being provided in a timely manner,” the authority said.

“Where models are referred to publicly, particularly to inform significant policy decisions, the model outputs, methodologies and key assumptions should be published at the same time,” the authority added. “Where key decisions are justified by reference to statistics or management information, the underlying data should be made available.”

There was even some mild Vallance-bashing at this afternoon’s coronavirus press briefing, with NHS England chief Sir Simon Stevens having a dig at last weekend’s presentation. “The charts can be a bit hard to keep up with. I’ve bought just one chart [to the briefing] today. Those are facts, not forecasts or speculations, those are facts – people in hospital today,” Stevens said.

The models presented by Vallance and Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty have been criticised by Conservative backbenchers all week. With recorded cases falling in both London and Manchester as both cities enter lockdown, the government’s data will likely face more scrutiny over the coming days.

US election counts delayed 

One county in Pennsylvania – expected to be the tipping-point state in this presidential election – has stopped counting votes because election staff have taken the day off for “administrative work”. In Georgia, another crucial state, the Secretary of State has reminded county officials that they should click the “upload” button when registering new votes.

America is a great country with some strange habits. Funny incidents usually occur in every election cycle, but this time the fate of the most powerful country in the world hangs on these counties getting their acts together. In the four states yet to show a clear winner – Georgia, Arizona, Nevada and Pennsylvania – it will likely come down to tens of thousands of votes.

Democrats are confident they will win Pennsylvania later tonight, which would hand Biden victory, while Republicans think they can claw back Arizona and hold onto Pennsylvania, keeping Trump in the White House.

This razor-thin race might be declared by the major networks in a few hours.

Arrested for seeing granny

Government restrictions prevent you from seeing your elderly parent for months while her mental and physical wellbeing deteriorates. Then, when you try to bring your elderly parent to your home, you are arrested by police. This is the dystopian nightmare Leandra Ashton, a former Coronation Street actress, says she and her mother lived through.

Ashton’s mother, a retired nurse, 73, was arrested and restrained by police while attempting to take her grandmother, 97, out of a care home.

“We raised a safeguarding issue, because we could see the deterioration of my nan in lockdown. She has dementia, so it takes a long time to feed her and give her drinks… it requires someone from the family,” Ashton told Talk Radio. “The impact [lockdown] had on my mum as well as my nan was horrific to see.

“The fact that there are rules in place that are separating families, purporting to protect and save lives, I find disgusting. The narrative needs to change, because we are focused so purely on one illness. As terrible as that illness is, it is one.”

Mutaz Ahmed
Political Reporter