Robert Peston Robert Peston

The lethal ambiguities in the ‘stay at home’ coronavirus advice

There are still potentially lethal ambiguities in the government’s coronavirus advice about who should go to work; such is the judgement of leading employers, to whom I’ve spoken. The fundamental question is whether businesses that are not doing work considered of national importance, but which involve employees working cheek by jowl in sweaty conditions, should cease operating. The head of one of the UK’s largest companies is absolutely clear to me that the government has given a signal that such operations should send staff home and switch off the machines. But a distraught mother of an employee of a Midlands steelworks forwarded me a message from the firm boss saying they were staying open, because they are not in Prime Minister’s list of sectors ordered to shut and ‘we therefore all need to be there’. The ‘all’ in this case include many men in their forties, fifties and sixties, who are thought to be particularly at risk from Covid-19.

The government has moved into a phase of banning people from being in groups, pretty much anywhere but the home. So what is it about the steelworks or any other business requiring close physical contact that isn’t engaged in work vital to the health and security of the nation that justifies it staying open?

In China, you’ll recall, pretty much all manufacturing ceased in Hubei during the lockdown. One answer is that some economic activity has to be sustained in the UK, or an economic contraction and reduction in our prosperity that is already likely to be more acute even than any phase of the Great Depression could be so extreme as to set back recovery for months and years.

But of course this entire dilemma highlights yet again what many are describing as the scandal of how slow the government has been to increase the UK’s Covid-19 testing capacity.

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Robert Peston
Written by
Robert Peston
Robert Peston is Political Editor of ITV News and host of the weekly political discussion show Peston. His articles originally appeared on his ITV News blog.

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