Government needs clearer ‘back to work’ message, says senior Tory MP
The government has to give clearer and more consistent advice on people going back to their workplaces, according to a prominent Tory backbencher.
Sir Graham Brady, who is chair of the 1922 Committee of Conservative backbenchers, said the message coming from ministers was unclear and that people needed “common sense advice”.
The government was due this week to begin a push to get people back into the office in a bid to stoke economic activity for bricks and mortar businesses in city centres.
However, the Telegraph reported today that the campaign has stalled due to concerns about the government’s own social distancing restrictions preventing many people to returning to the office.
The messaging has also at times been contradictory from government ministers, with some urging people to get back into the workplace and others striking a more cautious note.
Brady told the BBC there had been a “fundamental problem” in government messaging and that “when the government knows what it wants so achieve, it needs to make sure all of the official advice being issued is in tune with advice being put out by ministers”.
“We’ve really got to get to the point where we have greater consistency so we can have a steady push in one direction, reassuring people and giving them common sense advice,” Brady said.
“What seems odd is that when I and the Prime Minister back in June were urging people that they should feel safe to go back to work, the government’s official guidance remained was that people should work from home where they possibly could.”
Recent analysis showed just 17 per cent of people had returned to work in the UK’s 63 largest cities — unchanged from June when the lockdown started to lift.
Central London has been damaged by slow footfall recovery, with mayor of London Sadiq Khan saying last month that “empty offices are a big problem for central London”.
The Prime Minister’s spokesman said “there’s never been a back to work campaign” and that it was a “press partnership campaign with regional and local media”.
“We are promoting how to make your workplace Covid secure so more people can work from the office and we’ve just talked about that,” he said.
“We’ve also changed the guidance to give employers more discretion over how their employees can work safely.”