UK Covid live: Labour calls for hospitality support after socialising discouraged

Labour has written to the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, urging him to provide more support for businesses facing “closure by stealth” amid concerns over calls for people to consider limiting their social contacts around Christmas.

The shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves, and the shadow business secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, said in the letter that they met business leaders and major trade union bodies on Wednesday. They said they “learnt that many of them hadn’t had proper engagement from government on how Plan B and the necessary restrictions resulting from Omicron would affect them”.

The letter went on:

Since then, the public have been told to ‘de-prioritise social contact’. Following the science is crucial, but this will hit businesses and workers hard, especially in sectors like hospitality and leisure. Businesses face a perfect storm of cancelled bookings, rising costs and staff shortages.

Businesses and their employees have put up with so much from this government. It is time the government came forward with their plans to ensure our great British businesses and their workers have the clarity and support they need to weather this storm.

The health minister, Gillian Keegan, admitted the situation was “terrible” for hospitality having also suffered last Christmas, but insisted this morning that there were still measures in place to help businesses through the pandemic, including VAT reductions, business rates cuts and recovery loans. The chancellor “keeps everything under review”, she added.

But Labour said more support was needed after Prof Chris Whitty told the public on Wednesday to prioritise events that “really matter to them” over the festive period, in an effort to curb the spread of Omicron.

Indeed, the news has drawn concern from the hospitality sector as people weigh up whether to risk nights out or cancel to improve the chances of spending Christmas with family.

British Chambers of Commerce president Baroness Ruby McGregor-Smith said on Wednesday the cautions “will almost certainly have an enormous impact for businesses”. She added:

Despite this still we heard no news of any new financial support measures coming from government to help those businesses, and others badly affected by the current restrictions.

And the head of a company with 320 pubs and hotels said on Thursday that his business was now in a “zombie world”. Jonathan Neame, chief executive of Shepherd Neame, told Times Radio:

Go to pubs. Don’t go to pubs. It was the message last time which is a really confusing and difficult message. And confuses both the operators but also confuses customers, too. Up until this point, I think that people have been mainly concerned not so much for their personal health, but for getting self-isolated and missing their family Christmases. That’s been a sort of key driver behind cancellations. But I fear now the messaging is changing. And therefore, we may see much more acceleration in cancellations.

The acute problem is that if you miss Christmas, and we’re in the zombie world where we’ve been desperately trying to hang on to staff and want to hang on to staff, then what could be very profitable could quickly run into a significant loss.

The shadow health secretary, Wes Streeting, stressed that hospitality businesses were having a “hard time at the moment” and said the government should be “by their side”.

“I do think the chancellor and the business secretary need to get business leaders around the table with trade union leaders to hammer out a deal to help hospitality because, you know, they really need us right now,” he told ITV’s Good Morning Britain.

He said Sunak should return from his trip to California to agree a deal to help businesses hit by lower footfall due to the rise in Covid.

We understand the chancellor is currently out of the country in California. So perhaps he might want to get himself on a flight back and get a grip on the situation because businesses need certainty and confidence now.