Covid: Hancock Defends ‘Fair’ Tier 3 Offering For Greater Manchester

Health Secretary Matt Hancock has said that a £ 60 million offer to help Greater Manchester deal with tougher Covid restrictions “remains on the table”.

The area will receive £ 22 million to help enforce the “level three” rules that begin in the area on Friday.

Hancock said “the door is open” to more talks about a £ 60 million package to support businesses and employees, but local leaders want at least £ 65 million.

Labor Mayor Andy Burnham said people were facing “a winter of real hardship.”

Greater Manchester’s 2.8 million inhabitants are the first to be forced to the third tier, the highest tier in England, against the wishes of local leaders.

Hancock said that “the settlement on the table the mayor of Greater Manchester walked away from”, which was for £ 60 million, was “a fair deal”.

But on Tuesday, Burnham claimed the offer was too low, saying: “I don’t think it’s right to ask people to go into a lockdown … without supporting them through all that.”

Six Conservative MPs have written to Mr. Burnham accusing him of putting his “ego” above the people of Greater Manchester, suggesting that the mayor should not participate in future talks with the government.

Meanwhile, negotiations will continue on Wednesday over whether South Yorkshire will be the next to move to level three restrictions.

At the third level, pubs and bars that do not serve large meals have to close, and there are more restrictions on mixing households.

The government’s three-tier strategy of regional measures is designed to avoid a national lockdown.

After ten days of talks, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said with “regret” that he would impose the third tier restrictions in Greater Manchester without the agreement of local leaders.

In addition to closing many pubs and bars, the restrictions mean that gambling shops, casinos, bingo halls, adult gaming centers, and soft-play areas will also have to close, while there is a no-travel guide. inside or outside the area.

The prime minister said the region would receive £ 22 million as part of a “comprehensive support package” for enforcement measures and local test and trace work.

On Tuesday night, Hancock told MPs that a separate sum of £ 60 million was “proportional” to what had been awarded to the other third tier areas, and was still available.

Local politicians in Greater Manchester originally submitted a request for £ 90 million, but reduced their claim to £ 65 million, a figure described by Burnham as the “bare minimum”.

Burnham accused the government of “playing poker” with people’s lives through negotiations.

And Labor’s shadow health secretary, Jonathan Ashworth, accused the government of “punishing the people of Greater Manchester.”

“This is a national crisis and we will not defeat this virus cheaply,” he added.

Meanwhile, Chris Green, the Conservative MP from Bolton West, said his constituency in Greater Manchester had taken tougher local measures than level three and claimed they “didn’t work.”

“The government believes that three weeks of closure of pubs and soft-play centers will make a dramatic difference,” he said. “It hasn’t and it won’t.”

Separately, six Conservative MPs from the region wrote to Mr. Burnham, accusing him of “inability to work constructively” with the government after he was offered “92% of what he asked for.”

They asked him to step aside to allow other local leaders to reach an agreement that reflects the “extremely urgent and precarious position in which we find ourselves now.”

Talks will continue on Wednesday about whether South Yorkshire will be the next to enter level three, also known as the “very high” alert level.

Other areas at level two, but known to be in discussions of stricter restrictions, are West Yorkshire, the North East, Teesside and Nottinghamshire.

When the restrictions go into effect in Greater Manchester, around 5.8 million people in England will live under the highest level of coronavirus alert.

That includes 1.5 million people in the Liverpool city region and 1.5 million people in Lancashire.

On Tuesday, the UK recorded its highest daily death toll since June 5, with 241 more people dying within 28 days of a positive test for the virus.

Another 21,331 confirmed cases were reported, the first time that cases have exceeded 20,000 since mass testing began, with the exception of October 4, which included thousands of cases from previous days that had been lost due to an error in the spreadsheet.

The health secretary said the virus “remains a dangerous threat” and that cases among those over 60 continue to rise.

He said average daily hospital admissions in Greater Manchester are now higher than they were on March 26, just after the UK entered a national lockdown.

But Hancock said there were “early signs” in northeast England that cases were “starting to flatten out”, although the decline in infections so far was occurring among young people who were less at risk.

Greater Manchester leaders originally submitted a request for £ 90 million, which had been calculated by a former Treasury official.

On Tuesday morning, they discussed £ 75 million with government officials, which would have covered the period to the end of the financial year.

It is understood that Boris Johnson and Burnham themselves discussed a figure of £ 60 million, but could not agree; Mr Burnham suggested that it was not possible to accept less than £ 65 million.

Ministers were reluctant to set a precedent of giving one region more proportionally than another, especially given ongoing talks with various other parts of the country that could also face tougher restrictions.

A Greater Manchester source said: “We had calculated the cost of what people needed. Instead of giving us what people needed, they were only willing to give us what they would offer.”

But government sources have suggested that Burnham was uncompromising, with one saying: “Other local GM leaders were more reasonable and constructive, but Burnham was too proud to make a deal.”

So after 10 days of talks (of some sort) and billions spent during this crisis, it’s something that the deal fell over a gap of £ 5 million, a figure that neither party questioned.