Covid: Grant Shapps admits local guidance ‘could have been clearer’
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Transport secretary Grant Shapps today admitted the communications around the local guidance in coronavirus hotspots “could have been clearer”.
“It’s important to say there are no new local lockdowns, no change in the law— the law is the same throughout England with regards to coronavirus,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
“But I think it would also be churlish not to say that the communications could have been clearer and this was in essence simply guidance or advice just to remind people living in areas where the level happens to be quite a lot higher than the national average of the sensible things to do.”
Confusion has been mounting over current Covid-19 guidance after the government quietly issued a fresh warning against travel to and from eight areas of England.
The London borough of Hounslow is among the locations singled out in the new guidance due to high prevalence of the highly transmissible Indian variant of the virus.
According to the guidance, which is not law, journeys to and from Bedford, Blackburn and Darwen, Bolton, Burnley, Kirklees, Leicester, Hounslow, and North Tyneside should be avoided “unless essential”. However, exemptions include travelling for work, when working from home is not possible, and going to school or university.
The guidance affects about 2m people across England and also those who enter and leave every day to go to work, school or for leisure.
Ministers were forced to backtrack over the guidance, which initially asked people to avoid non-essential travel altogether.
The move sparked criticism that the government was attempted to introduce lockdown by the back door — an accusation it denied.