The local lockdown debacle

What a mess. Ministers have today been defending the decision to place eight areas in what is being called a ‘lockdown by stealth’, after it turned out that the government had quietly published guidance to slow the spread of the Indian variant without telling anyone in those areas. 

That guidance, which pitched up on the gov.uk website at 5.26pm on Friday, told people to avoid indoor meetings and avoid travelling in and out of affected areas unless it is essential. But when journalists from the Manchester Evening News approached local politicians and public health officials, it turned out that they didn’t know about this guidance. Which rather begs the question of what the point of it is.

The point of publishing the guidance so quietly, according to Labour, is that ministers know how unpopular local lockdowns are with MPs, and so are trying to introduce them without those MPs noticing. Shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth made this claim in an urgent question in the Commons today, saying:

‘Does the Minister appreciate that cities such as mine, Leicester, or towns and boroughs such as Burnley, Bolton, Batley and Blackburn, have borne the brunt of this crisis over these past 15 months? We have often been in lockdown for longer than elsewhere.