Conservative MPs have told Matt Hancock that businesses will suffer unless the government takes a more sophisticated approach to the blanket restrictions affecting 4.5 million people across northern England. Ministers announced on Friday that people across large swaths of the north and Leicester would remain under tighter restrictions for a third week as the coronavirus infection rate continued to rise in some areas. The measures, introduced with a few hours’ notice on 31 July, ban people in the affected areas from visiting family and friends and from socialising with other households in pubs or restaurants. The restrictions also prevent the opening of casinos, skating rinks, bowling alleys, exhibition halls, conference centres and indoor play areas, and the resumption of certain procedures in beauty salons, all of which were allowed to open in the rest of England from Saturday. Jason McCartney, the Conservative MP for Colne Valley in West Yorkshire, said on Sunday he would continue lobbying the government to ditch the one-size-fits-all approach to the measures and instead adopt a “postcode-level” method. McCartney said certain towns and villages that had not had a coronavirus case for weeks should be removed from the restrictions, with the proviso that any new outbreak would be acted on immediately. Public Health England data shows there have been few if any coronavirus cases in some of the more rural areas currently covered by the restrictions. In West Yorkshire, for example, there were 54 cases clustered in and around the town of Halifax in the week to 11 August, but none in the outlying villages of Hebden Bridge, Mytholmroyd and Sowerby Bridge. Officials have said it is difficult to lift one village, town or borough out of regional restrictions because people regularly travel across geographic boundaries. The infection rate is also constantly changing, so any easing of easing of restrictions may have to be reversed if cases surged.
McCartney is one of about a dozen Tory MPs, including some in “red wall” constituencies, pressing the government to release certain areas from the lockdown. He said ministers were “getting the message loud and clear” but they needed local authorities to join the push for a new approach. “We’re going to be in this situation for weeks and weeks and weeks unless we start reacting and releasing areas,” he said, adding that businesses such as beauty salons and restaurants would suffer in these areas unless restrictions were eased. “If there are measures where there are cases, no one will complain about that. But people don’t like it when they’re under the restrictions where there haven’t been cases for weeks.” Other Tory MPs, such as Craig Whittaker in Calder Valley and Mark Eastwood in Dewsbury, said after the restrictions were extended on Friday that they would continue pressing for a more targeted approach. Although infection rates remain highest in parts of Greater Manchester, east Lancashire, West Yorkshire and Leicester, officials are closely monitoring several areas in the Midlands and Swindon, in Wiltshire, where the proportion of cases is more than double England’s average. Restrictions have not yet been introduced in Swindon or other areas named as “of concern” in Public Health England’s latest weekly surveillance report, released on Friday, which include Northampton in the east Midlands, Newark and Sherwood in Nottinghamshire, Oadby and Wigston in Leicestershire, and Sandwell in the West Midlands.