{"id":214537,"date":"2020-10-05T07:15:16","date_gmt":"2020-10-05T07:15:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=214537"},"modified":"2020-10-07T05:14:53","modified_gmt":"2020-10-07T05:14:53","slug":"no-lockdowns-for-the-wealthy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=214537","title":{"rendered":"No Lockdowns for the Wealthy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ministers accused of ‘political interference’ as wealthy areas avoid local lockdowns<\/h3>\n

Pippa Crera and Lizzy Buchan \u2013 The Mirror Oct 4, 2020<\/strong><\/h1>\n

Ministers have been accused of “political interference” over local lockdowns as leaked emails show wealthy areas are avoiding restrictions despite having higher Covid-19 rates than poorer areas.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Government is under pressure to explain why\u00a0large parts of the north and Midlands are under local lockdowns while overlooking areas with similar infection rates.<\/span><\/p>\n

Professor Dominic Harrison, director of public health for Blackburn with Darwen, in Lancashire area, wrote to Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), saying the measures were “avoidably increasing economic inequality”.<\/span><\/p>\n

In an email, seen by the Sunday Times, he said: “There is now a different level of central control applied across local authorities, with some of the more economically challenged boroughs being placed into more restrictive control measures at an earlier point in their … case rate trajectory.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

“This has the effect of exacerbating the economic inequality impacts of the virus in those areas. We urgently need consistency in the national strategy if the control system itself is not to add to inequality, giving an economic ‘double whammy’ to more challenged areas.”<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Labour’s Jon Ashworth raised questions about why seats belonging to senior ministers such as Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick and Chief Whip Mark Spencer had been spared tougher measures.<\/span><\/p>\n

“I think because there is no clear guidelines as to why an area goes into restrictions and how an area comes out of restrictions then there is a suspicion that there is political interference – I hope there isn’t,” he told the BBC.<\/span><\/p>\n

“But until the Government publish clear guidelines, that suspicion will always linger.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Rishi Sunak’s seat in\u00a0North Yorkshire, has 73 new cases for every 100,000 people, is one of the least deprived areas in Britain.<\/span><\/p>\n

Newark, represented by Mr Jenrick, the housing secretary, and Sherwood, Mr Spencer’s seat, stands at 84 per 100,000 but have avoided lockdown.<\/span><\/p>\n

In contrast,\u00a0Blackburn with Darwen is one of Britain’s poorest boroughs and its Covid rate peaked at 212 weekly cases per 100,000 people.<\/span><\/p>\n

But when officials first imposed lockdowns in the area in August, they intervened in wards where the rate exceeded 60 weekly cases per 100,000.<\/span><\/p>\n

In areas where infections exceed 70 but lockdown has been avoided, the majority were represented by Tory MPs.<\/span><\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Leaked email reveals that wealthier parts of London are avoiding lockdowns despite having similar infection rates to working-class areas in northern England currently under strict lockdown <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[105],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-214537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-coronavirus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214537","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=214537"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214537\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":214561,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214537\/revisions\/214561"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=214537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=214537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=214537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}