Coronavirus: Greater Manchester 'to go into strictest tier measures'

Mayor Andy Burnham insists his opposition to tougher measures ‘has not changed’

(AFP via Getty Images)

A battle of wills between Boris Johnson and northern leaders is set to come to a head on Thursday, with Greater Manchester expected to be told to accept the toughest coronavirus restrictions. 

The city’s metro mayor Andy Burnham, who has threatened legal action over the prime minister’s plans, will have early-morning talks with 10 Downing Street ahead of a statement to MPs by health secretary Matt Hancock at which a decision is expected to be announced.

He responded furiously to reports suggesting that the government’s Joint Biosecurity Centre “Gold Command” had already signed off a move to Tier 3 of Mr Johnson’s Covid alert system, alongside Merseyside where pubs, restaurants, gyms and betting shops have been shut down in a bid to stem soaring coronavirus infections.

Having initially said he would make no comment ahead of tomorrow’s meeting, he tweeted: “At no point during tonight’s briefing was this news communicated to us. Media told first once again. Our position has not changed.”

Mr Burnham is expected to push at tomorrow’s meeting for any change in restrictions covering the 2.8 million people of Greater Manchester to be accompanied by a  more generous financial package, including support worth at least 80 per cent of the wages of workers at businesses which are forced to shut.

He has said the introduction of Tier 3 measures under current terms would be “by imposition, not consent”.

Downing Street has said it wants to achieve “maximum consensus” with local leaders for tougher curbs on large swathes of the northwest, northeast and Yorkshire and Humber regions, but has made clear it has the power to impose them if they are not accepted voluntarily.

In the House of Commons on Wednesday, the prime minister piled on pressure for tighter restrictions across wide swathes of the north, telling MPs that a lack of cooperation from local authorities threatened his chances of averting the “misery” of a second national lockdown.

As daily positive tests neared 20,000, Mr Johnson was coming under intense pressure to announce a two-week national circuit-break, backed by his Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) in September and now by Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer, who accused the PM of “abandoning the science”.

A YouGov poll found 68 per cent of voters, including 65 per cent of Tory supporters, back the idea against just 20 per cent who do not.

Fuel was added by a scientific paper which found that a time-limited return to strict controls on social and economic activity could save thousands of lives, reducing UK coronavirus-related deaths for the rest of the year from about 19,900 to 12,100 and hospital admissions from 132,400 to 66,500.

But one of the study’s authors, the London School of Hygiene professor of infectious disease modelling and Sage member Graham Medley, warned that the PM may have left it too late to act in the October half-term, and suggested he could instead consider a Christmas holiday circuit-break to avoid disruption to education, with a possible repeat in the spring.

“Christmas is going to be very difficult anyway,” said Prof Medley. “In some ways we kind of missed the boat a little.” 

In the Commons, Sir Keir said that since the Sage advice was given on 21 September “the infection rate has quadrupled, hospital admissions have gone from 275 a day to 628 a day in England, yesterday 441 Covid patients were on ventilators and the number of deaths recorded was – tragically – the highest since 10 June”.

“That’s the cost of rejecting the advice,” Sir Keir told Mr Johnson.

The prime minister defended his approach, saying: “The whole point is to seize this moment now to avoid the misery of another national lockdown – into which he wants to go headlong – by delivering a regional solution.”

And he urged Sir Keir to “get on to his Labour friends in those parts of the north of England where we want to work with them to put those very stringent measures in place in order to deliver the reductions that the whole country wants to see”.

Ahead of meetings with deputy chief medical officer Jonathan Van-Tam, Mr Burnham and leaders of the city’s 10 councils issued a statement denouncing the government’s  “fundamentally flawed” efforts to move the area into tier 3.

Mr Burnham said that the city was ready to take legal action to protect “many thousands of residents who are going to be left in severe hardship in the run-up to Christmas” if the move goes ahead. 

“We would not just leave them in the lurch, we would try and support them and that would include any legal action we could take on their behalf,” he said.

The mayor of the Liverpool City region, Steve Rotheram said that the support announced by chancellor Rishi Sunak was “inadequate” and his authority would be topping it up.

He accused the government of trying to do “lockdown on the cheap in the north”.

Nationwide, a further 19,724 new positive test results and 137 fatalities were recorded in the past 24 hours,

In Lancashire, Tory county council leader Geoff Driver said it was “inevitable” his region would enter tier 3. And Tees Valley mayor Ben Houchen revealed that civic leaders will meet with Downing Street on Friday to press for additional support for businesses if the area is also moved into the top bracket.