Christmas is NOT cancelled as ministers ‘bubbles’ WILL go ahead in England

Ministers today made clear that Christmas bubbles will not be scrapped in England – despite urging families to wait until Easter.

Housing Secretary Robert Jenrick insisted there will be no change to the legal rules underpinning the five-day festive easing south of the border, saying the government should not ‘tell people how to come to a decision’.

But he urged families to ‘choose to do less’ amid anxiety over rising coronavirus cases, admitting that the close contact is likely to fuel infections in the New Year. 

The intervention comes as more crisis talks with the four nations are due to be held, amid fears that Nicola Sturgeon could spark chaos by choosing to go her own way.

No10 is braced for Scotland to take a tougher line, after Ms Sturgeon insisted that she would not hesitate to break ranks – suggesting the length of the relaxation and the three-household limit might need to be reduced.  

In England, there will be ‘tough’ warnings to think twice before celebrating Christmas with elderly or vulnerable relatives, with an advertising campaign set to be launched.

Families will also be advised to ‘stay local’ amid fears of giant traffic jams and packed ‘Covid carriages’ on trains.

Two leading medical journals had warned keeping to the five-day plan was a ‘major error that will cost many lives’.

But ministers decided it would be unfair to penalise the whole country because of concerns about surging cases in London and the South East.

And there were warnings that any attempt to ban Christmas would be impossible to enforce, with police chiefs already warning officers would not get involved in ‘policing people’s Christmas dinners’.

Concerns have also been raised about the impact on people’s mental health if families are suddenly forced to cancel their plans to meet up this Christmas, and instead have to spend it alone.

Michael Gove, who chaired last night’s Cabinet Office meeting, will hold further talks with Ms Sturgeon and the leaders of the administrations in Wales and Northern Ireland today in a bid to agree a UK-wide approach. 

But sources said the rules in England would not change.

As ministers prepared to confirm that most parts of the country will remain in their current Covid tier until the New Year: 

• Official figures showed that Covid cases are rising in three-quarters of local authority areas just two weeks after the second lockdown ended;
• New documents revealed that the PM’s lockdown-busting former aide Dominic Cummings received a pay rise of up to £50,000 this year;
• A YouGov poll last night found that 57 per cent want to see the Christmas amnesty scrapped, with 31 per cent thinking it should go ahead as planned;
• Treasury sources ruled out providing additional financial help for hospitality businesses in London, which enters Tier Three today;
• Mass testing in secondary schools from January will reduce the number of children and teachers sent home;
• A report revealed 819,000 jobs have been lost since the start of the pandemic, with hospitality hit hardest;
• Experts said a new virus strain which may have driven a spike in cases was likely to have originated in Britain;
• Health Secretary Matt Hancock was under pressure to publish details on the coronavirus vaccine rollout;
• A report revealed that NHS England was working on the assumption that less than half of the population will get the injections in 2021;
• The five-day travel quarantine system was in chaos as two testing providers pulled out after being swamped with demand.

In a round of interviews this morning, Mr Jenrick spelled out the UK government’s position.

‘My sense is that many people, older members of the public, are coming to the conclusion that with the great news of the vaccine it might be wise to wait and get together with family and friends a little bit later on, but I strongly feel that this is something where members of the public need to use their own judgment,’ he told BBC Breakfast.

‘The Government can set a legal framework, and we have done and that applies across the whole of the United Kingdom, but we can’t legislate for every eventuality and everything that’s happening in people’s own lives.’

Mr Jenrick said he ‘respected’ the opinions of scientists warning about the consequences of the easing, and said there had been ‘quite serious’ fallout in the US following Thanksgiving last month.  

‘This is a virus that thrives on social interaction, so bringing more people together, even over this short period of time, is not cost-free. It will have consequences in terms of increasing the rate. It will rise,’ he told Sky News.

Mr Jenrick suggested some people may want to put off large family gatherings until the spring.

‘Easter can be the new Christmas,’ he said.

Mr Johnson’s decision to press ahead with the Christmas plans followed a crisis session last night involving official representatives of all four UK nations. 

Among the options they discussed was postponing the festive amnesty until next year. 

But the UK-wide policy approach is at risk with Ms Sturgeon having made clear on the call that she is considering different rules for Scotland. 

These could see the five-day period – and the number of households – reduced to just two north of the border.

But government sources pointed out that the move could be deeply disruptive for families who have already planned for the loosening. ‘Even she might baulk at this one,’ one source said. 

Another government aide said: ‘If you ban people from seeing their loved ones at Christmas, the next question is, how are you going to enforce that?

‘Would you set up roadblocks to stop people travelling? Would you ask the police to kick down doors on Christmas day? That is not something this Prime Minister would ever contemplate.’

The Government’s Christmas ‘wobble’ came amid stark warnings from experts.

In a hard-hitting joint editorial yesterday, the British Medical Journal and Health Service Journal called for the ‘rash’ decision to relax social distancing rules to be reversed.

They warned the Government was ‘about to blunder into another major error that will cost many lives’.

They added: ‘Members of the public can and should mitigate the impact of the third wave by being as careful as possible over the next few months. But many will see the lifting of restrictions over Christmas as permission to drop their guard.’

The British Medical Association also urged ministers to think again on the Christmas regulations.

Experts continued to sound the alarm about the risks of the festive season today. 

Linda Bauld, professor of public health at the University of Edinburgh, said Christmas celebrations should be held in the ‘most modest way possible’ if it is necessary to mix households.

She told BBC Breakfast: ‘I think, when this decision was made to have this loosening, we were in a slightly different position than we are now, in the middle of the lockdown in England, the tougher tier system was about to be introduced, and I think Governments hoped that numbers would continue to go down, and that is not the case.

‘Just to emphasise, we’ve got a lot of people in hospital now – over 18,000 – we’re really heading towards the peak of just over 20,000 that we had in April.’

She said that, while the safest thing would be not to mix households, there are some exceptions, and that celebrations should be postponed if possible.

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer yesterday tried to pressure the Government into scrapping the amnesty. In a letter to the Prime Minister, Sir Keir said: ‘The tiered system has not kept the virus under control and has left us with precious little headroom.

‘If you take the wrong decision now, the ramifications for our NHS and our economy in the New Year could be severe.’

But Tory grandee Sir Desmond Swayne said ministers were right to trust families to celebrate safely.

He added: ‘As a Conservative, I fundamentally believe that individuals make better decisions on behalf of themselves, their families and communities than Government or medical journals can. The health and scientific lobby has to be put back in its box.’  

The news came as last night questions mounted over the Christmas bubble plan amid a rise in cases, while the emergence of the new Covid strain has thrown another element into the situation. 

In a blunt editorial yesterday, the BMJ and HSJ said: ‘When government devised the current plans to allow house-hold mixing over Christmas it had assumed the covid-19 demand on the NHS would be decreasing. 

‘But it is not, it is rising, and the emergence of a new strain of the virus has introduced further potential jeopardy.

‘Members of the public can and should mitigate the impact of the third wave by being as careful as possible over the next few months.

‘But many will see the lifting of restrictions over Christmas as permission to drop their guard.

‘The government was too slow to introduce restrictions in the Spring and again in the Autumn.

‘It should now reverse its rash decision to allow household mixing and instead extend the tiers over the five-day Christmas period in order to bring numbers down in the advance of a likely third wave. 

‘It should also review and strengthen the tier structure, which has failed to suppress rates of infection and hospitalisation.’ 

The article added that ‘the government is about to blunder into another major error that will cost many lives’. 

‘If our political leaders fail to take swift and decisive action, they can no longer claim to be ‘protecting the NHS,’ it said.   

Following up on the report, Chris Hopson, head of the hospitals’ group NHS Providers, told the Times that the government may have to make ‘difficult decisions’, but the consequences of a third surge in Covid-19 cases ‘would be far worse.’

Meanwhile, Chaand Nagpaul, head of the British Medical Association, told the Times: ‘Whilst we understand that many families will want to spend time together we know that no one will want to put a family member or friend at risk from contracting the virus.

‘We would urge everyone to do all they can to avoid this.’  

Professor James Naismith, from the University of Oxford, meanwhile said he expected a post Christmas surge in case numbers.

He said: ‘The likelihood of an exponential surge due to relaxation over Christmas means that high case numbers at the start of Christmas will make January dramatically worse.

But he said festive get-togethers could be made safer, adding: ‘If the visit is short, wash your hands thoroughly, wear a mask if possible, sit apart and ventilate the room. If two households are joining a household over Christmas, it will help if everyone in the household stops all other socialising for at least five days beforehand.’ 

Professor John Edmunds, a member of the Government’s Sage advisory group, said: ‘Just because we can meet up with two other households, it doesn’t mean that we should.’

But Professor Paul Hunter, from the University of East Anglia, said gatherings are a ‘tolerable risk’, adding that shops and schools will be closed over the festive period and people will not be going to work, all driving down the R rate.

‘It does carry with it a risk but, looking at the other side of things, January is generally a very bad month for people’s mental health,’ he said.

Mr Hunter later told the Telegraph: ‘If you stay with an infected person less than five days then the risk is about one in eight. If that per son is asymptomatic then the risk is even lower, about one in 20.’ 

Scientists said Imperial College research, published three weeks ago, showed the chance of catching a virus from mixing at home for a short period was around five per cent.

Meanwhile, politicians also urged caution. Speaking in the Scottish Parliament yesterday, Ms Sturgeon said: ‘There will be a four-nations discussion later today to take stock of recent developments. But, for now, I would urge the utmost caution.

‘If you can avoid mixing with other households over Christmas, especially indoors, please do.

‘But if you feel it essential to do so – and we have tried to be pragmatic in recognising that some people will – then please reduce your unnecessary contacts as much as possible between now and then.’

Mr Drakeford told the Welsh Parliament: ‘Whichever way the governments of the United Kingdom resolve this issue, it will be a very, very finely balanced set of judgments between different sorts of harms that are caused whichever course of action we embark on.’

Mr Drakeford said the ‘virulence’ of Covid-19 this winter had not been predicted in modelling that was carried out in many parts of the world.

‘I will be discussing with Michael Gove directly whether the four-nation agreement that we struck continues to have marginally more advantages then disadvantages, or whether there is a different balance that we ought to strike,’ he told the Senedd.

‘In either direction, harm is done.

‘Harm is done whether people get together over Christmas in a way that isn’t responsible and doesn’t observe all the advice that we have given to people.

‘If we seek to prevent people from meeting over Christmas, a different sort of harm will be done to people’s sense of mental health, to people’s sense of how they can survive through this incredibly difficult year together.’

He added: ‘The choice is a grim one, isn’t it. I have read in my own email account over the last couple of days heart-rending pleas from people not to reverse what we have agreed for Christmas.

‘People who live entirely alone, who have made arrangements to be with people for the first time, they say to me that this is the only thing that they have been able to look forward to in recent weeks.

‘And yet we know, if people do not use the modest amount of additional freedom available responsibly, then we will see an impact of that on our already hard-pressed health service.’

More tears for tiers: Rising cases set to dash hopes of areas going down a level

By Claire Ellicott, political corespondent for the Daily Mail

Hopes that some regions might be moved out of the highest coronavirus tiers ahead of Christmas look set to be dashed today.

The overwhelming majority of areas are expected to remain in their current level of restrictions when the results of the first review are announced.

Despite hopes that some places such as Leeds and Greater Manchester could be downgraded, figures suggest the overall coronavirus rate is rising across England.

Boris Johnson had raised the hopes of some MPs that their areas would move down a tier on the first review date when he originally set out the plans for the controversial system.

But cases have continued to rise, with London and parts of Essex and Hertfordshire having been moved up a tier.

The news is likely to be met with anger by Tory MPs. Many are concerned by the economic damage of the stringent restrictions, particularly in Tier Three, where hospitality businesses are forced to close.

Meanwhile, barely anywhere in the country is in Tier One – the only level under which household mixing is allowed indoors.

Many MPs and business leaders have also been disappointed by the lack of official assessment of the economic costs of the tier system and have called for a radical rethink of the entire strategy.

The tier review will take place today, and any movements will most likely be confirmed tomorrow.

Figures yesterday show Covid-19 cases are rising in more than three quarters (78 per cent) of all local areas in England in the past week.

A total of 246 out of 315 local authority areas recorded a week-on-week increase in the seven days to December 11, according to Public Health England.

This includes every borough of London, 42 of the 45 local areas in eastern England, and 66 of the 67 local areas in south-east England.

In north-west England, where rates had previously been falling across almost the whole region, the latest figures show they are up in nearly two-thirds of areas.

When he unveiled the current tier system at the end of November, the Prime Minister said: ‘By using these tougher tiers and by using rapid turnaround tests on an ever greater scale… it should be possible for areas to move down the (tier) scale to lower levels of restrictions.’

But Tory MP Steve Baker, leader of the Covid Recovery Group of lockdown sceptics, said: ‘The current strategy to combat Covid clearly isn’t working. If it was, we would today be talking about areas moving down the tiers.

‘We must end the devastating cycle of repeated restrictions and lockdowns, recapture the public’s support and confidence and start living in a sustainable way again.’

It had been hoped that Leeds might be downgraded to Tier Two after Health Secretary Matt Hancock hinted at this on Monday.

Hilary Benn, the Labour MP for Leeds Central, said cases had fallen from more than 400 per 100,000 to fewer than 140.

Greater Manchester was also hoping to be moved down a tier. Mayor Andy Burnham said the region had a ‘strong case’ to come out of Tier Three.

But Government sources said that the review would take into account local authority areas and regions, rather than individual cities and towns.

Mr Hancock also wrote to Tory MPs to tell them any greater breakdown of areas was difficult, ruining the hopes of tens of thousands of residents in low-infection towns and villages who had hoped they could ‘de-couple’ from surrounding coronavirus hotspots.

A Government source said: ‘As the PM set out in November, we will review every local authority area and each region against the five indicators we published in our Covid Winter Plan.

‘We will also consider local views to build the most accurate picture of what is happening on the ground.’