Shock plans to work from home forever: Ministers propose to make it illegal to be forced into office

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Millions of office staff would be given a ‘default’ right to work from home under post-pandemic plans from ministers.

The proposals would change the law to make it impossible for employers to insist on staff attending the workplace unless they can show it is essential.

The Government will consult on the plan – part of a drive to promote flexible working – over the summer, ahead of possible legislation later this year.

The move is likely to spark a backlash amid fears it could damage productivity, harm businesses that rely on workers going into the office and prevent a return to normality in town and city centres. 

A report from Tony Blair warned this week that almost six million white-collar jobs were at risk of being shipped abroad if the work-from-home revolution continued.

The plans are also likely to spark a fierce Cabinet battle. Both Chancellor Rishi Sunak and Boris Johnson have spoken about the benefits of office life as well as the danger that a permanent home-based culture could create ‘zombie towns’.

A Whitehall source said: ‘We are looking at introducing a default right to flexible working. That would cover things like reasonable requests by parents to start late so they can drop their kids at childcare.

‘But in the case of office workers in particular it would also cover working from home – that would be the default right unless the employer could show good reason why someone should not.’

Cabinet Office minister Michael Gove suggested this week that a hybrid model that included home working was likely to become the norm for many, adding: ‘We won’t go back to the status quo.’

It could effectively allow the millions of office staff who have worked from home during the pandemic to remain doing so for all or part of the week, indefinitely.

Yesterday, a leaked Cabinet Office presentation on the post-Covid ‘new normal’ revealed ministers had been told they should not encourage workers to go back to their desks even if all social distancing measures are lifted on July 19.

Ministers were told that the Government was now ‘actively looking at ways to help people continue working from home if there is no need for them to be in an office’. A formal consultation on giving workers a legal right to work from home goes a stage further however.

Ministers were also advised that face masks were likely to be needed ‘in some settings’, potentially for months or even years. And there was a warning that restrictions on foreign travel may have to remain in place for a ‘significant period’.

The development came as:

• Dominic Cummings published expletive-laden messages apparently from Boris Johnson, in which the PM branded the Health Secretary ‘hopeless’;
• When asked if he was ‘useless’, Mr Hancock replied: ‘I don’t think so’;
• Mr Cummings also claimed the PM was planning his Downing Street exit – and wanted to ‘make money and have fun’;
• A string of Tory MPs spoke out in the Commons against plans to delay the June 21 ‘Freedom Day’;
• Hundreds of thousands of NHS and care staff could be forced to have jabs for flu as well as Covid – despite fears the move could fuel a staffing crisis;
• Scientific advisers indicated they have no plans to recommend that under-40s are given the Oxford AstraZeneca jab despite pressure on Pfizer stocks;
• Infections are now five times higher in young adults than in over-65s;
• A major British trial identified a lifesaving treatment for Covid victims;
• Patients would be given health MOTs when they go for vaccine boosters or flu jabs under NHS plans;
• Virus cases in Cornwall have skyrocketed following the G7 summit of world leaders in the county and an influx of holidaymakers.

Any move to sanction a permanent shift to home working is likely to meet resistance from Conservative MPs.

Felicity Buchan, Tory MP for Kensington, said the continued advice to work from home was having a devastating impact on central London businesses.

Mark Harper, chairman of the Covid Recovery Group of Tory MPs, said ministers had no business interfering in relations between employers and their staff.

And fellow Conservative Sir Charles Walker claimed that for many younger people working from home was the equivalent of the new ‘dark satanic mills’.

Under existing law, employers can require staff to attend the workplace. Ultimately, a refusal to go in to work can be deemed an ‘unauthorised absence’, allowing an employer to begin disciplinary proceedings. But the Business Department is now looking to change the law to encourage flexible working.

Mr Johnson pledged to introduce the change at the 2019 election.

A Flexible Working Taskforce, established by Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng this year to advise on the change, is expected to recommend that people are given the right to continue working from home.

Peter Cheese, the co-chairman of the taskforce, said last month that the pandemic had demonstrated that staff could work effectively outside traditional workplaces. He cited a survey showing that 71 per cent of firms had found home working either boosted or made no difference to their productivity.

In March, Mr Sunak said that home working was no substitute for an office environment with ‘people riffing off each other’.

And a senior source last night insisted Mr Johnson continued to believe in the benefits of office working. 

Britain’s daily Covid cases hit 9,000 for the first time since February as cases spike by a fifth in a week and hospitalisations soar by another 40% amid the rapid spread of Indian variant – but deaths stay flat

By Stephen Matthews and Sam Blanchard for the MailOnline

Britain today recorded 9,000 daily Covid cases for the first time since February as the Indian variant continues to spread widely across the country.

Department of Health bosses posted 9,055 positive tests across the UK — up by a fifth on last Wednesday’s count. It is the highest toll since February 25, when 9,985 infections were registered.

Hospitalisations have also risen by 40 per cent in the space of a week in a clear sign that the rapid spread of the mutant strain has started to increase pressure on hospitals despite the success of the vaccination drive. Health officials recorded 173 admissions on June 12, the most recent day figures are available for. For comparison, the figure the previous Saturday was 123.

Despite the uptick in the number of infected patients needing NHS care, deaths remain flat. Another nine victims were added to the official fatality toll today, up from six last week — but the overall daily average for the past week has remained in single figures. 

But in a glimmer of hope the fast-spreading strain won’t force ministers into delaying Freedom Day again, figures also show Covid outbreaks appear to be flat or falling in Bolton, Blackburn and other areas that were the first to be hit by the Indian Delta variant.  

Fears are growing, however, that a shortage of jabs may force No10 to push back the final unlocking once again, with the pace of the roll-out having already slowed to around 450,000 a day — half of the speed seen during the best days of the programme.

Ministers have conceded supply of Pfizer’s jab is ‘tight’ while Moderna’s is also limited, and regulators have advised under-40s are not given the British-made AstraZeneca jab – the only other one available – because of its rare links to fatal blood clots, massively increasing demand for the other two options.

Boris Johnson stressed the urgent need to inoculate as many people as possible to finally end restrictions on July 19, insisting the four-week delay gave the NHS ‘more crucial weeks’ to protect Britons from the Indian variant. 

But government advisers have warned that some restrictions are likely to remain even after the final step of lifting lockdown has been taken, with social distancing and measures like work from home, face masks and test and trace continuing. Peaks of future outbreaks ‘would be much higher’ if all the advice was abandoned completely, scientists warned.

In other developments today:

• One of the country’s top scientists today insisted Britain’s Covid crisis ‘will be over’ if vaccines still keep people out of hospital even when they catch the Indian ‘Delta’ variant or future versions of the coronavirus;
• Sadiq Khan today called for ministers to send more Pfizer and Moderna Covid vaccines to London despite the UK having a ‘tight’ supply of both jabs; 
• Britain will not give coronavirus vaccines to children yet because No10’s advisors want more data on risks before expanding the rollout;
• Matt Hancock confirmed Covid vaccinations will be made compulsory for care home workers, despite backlash from unions and industry bosses that the controversial move would worsen staff shortages;
• Fewer than 40 per cent of care home staff in parts of London have been fully vaccinated against Covid, MailOnline analysis revealed;
• A leaked document gave a glimpse of the UK’s potential ‘new normal’ with facemasks, working from home and travel quarantine rules set to stay beyond July 19.; 
• Humiliated Matt Hancock insisted he ‘doesn’t think’ he is ‘f****** hopeless’ after Boris Johnson’s devastating private verdict on his performance was revealed in slew of extraordinary messages posted on social media by maverick ex-No10 chief Dominic Cummings.

Meanwhile, Britain’s Covid crisis ‘will be over’ if vaccines still keep people out of hospital even when they catch the Indian ‘Delta’ variant or future versions of the coronavirus, one of Oxford’s jab-makers said today.

Professor Sir Andrew Pollard, chief of the Oxford Vaccine Group that made and trialled the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine, said that coronavirus would never go away but it wouldn’t cause disaster if the jabs continue to work.

Speaking in a meeting with MPs on the science committee in Parliament he said that, if vaccines break the link between infections and mass deaths, ‘we will reach a point where we stop looking at what’s happening in the community’.

He cautioned that there will be a constant stream of new variants in the coming years and that most will evolve to try and get past vaccine immunity, but jabs should still work and they can continue to be updated.

He said: ‘If that very high protection against hospitalisation continues, despite spread in the community, then the public health crisis is over. And so far, up to Delta, we’re in a very good position as long as we’ve got people vaccinated.’ 

Sir Andrew’s comments were latest in a line of scientific voices warning people that Britain must learn to live with the virus even in a post-vaccine world.

Despite this, leaked SAGE documents suggest that some social distancing and measures like work from home, face masks and test and trace will have to stay in place even after lockdown rules come to an end in July. Peaks of future outbreaks ‘would be much higher’ if all the advice was abandoned completely, scientists warned.

Dr Susan Hopkins, a Public Health England infectious disease expert, cautioned in the same meeting that the true number of daily infections in the UK right now could be as high as 25,000, much higher than the 7,500 average positive tests.

She said: ‘It doesn’t take very much double to get to large numbers… But what we hope we won’t see – and I think we won’t because of vaccines – is the same number of hospitalisations.

In one gloomy prediction Dr John McCauley, a flu expert at the Francis Crick Institute in London, said the Covid death toll could still be as high as 45,000 per year when lockdown rules have ended completely. He told the i newspaper: ‘There’s no inherent reason why the virus will lose its virulence.’ 

But Government minister Michael Gove said on Times Radio yesterday: ‘We have to accept that this virus will circulate and it will be the case, unfortunately, that in winters to come we will find that people contract it or subsequent variants and they will fall ill.’ 

In the committee meeting this morning Sir Andrew, who was knighted last week for his work tackling Covid, said: ‘If we’re able to build immunity in our population and keep people out of hospital we will reach a point where we stop looking in this granular detail at what’s happening in the community because, if we do, we’ll just focus on it and worry because [the virus] will escape from vaccines… 

‘This will happen – it’s going to continue to happen. But in the end we’re going to have to come back to focusing on the really important public health issue, which is the hospitalisation and the death. 

‘If transmission is disconnected by vaccine immunity from severe disease to a large extent, then we’ll need to monitor new variants perhaps if we need to design a new vaccine and so on, but we are going to have to live with it being in our communities and transmitting.’ 

Learning to live with the virus spreading could involve carrying on with some of the behaviour changes brought in in the past year. 

Scientists on the SAGE advisory group said rules ‘are likely to be needed beyond the end of the current road map process,’ The Times reported, or resurgences of the virus could lead to a need to ‘reverse’ the reopening.

The Whitehall paper suggests that the government will stop short of urging workers to return to offices even after ‘Freedom Day’ finally arrives. There is also a suggestion that face masks will be needed in some settings long-term, as well as keeping post-travel isolation rules.

Anyone who has coronavirus symptoms will still be expected to isolate, according to the draft proposals. And fears have been raised that more restrictions will be needed if the disease surges again in the winter.

The document – seen by Politico – emerged as furious Tories predicted up to 70 MPs could inflict a bloody nose on Boris Johnson in a crunch lockdown vote tonight.

Professor Hopkins said on the future of social distancing: ‘This is a balance. In some countries like Sweden they have done a lot in terms of social responsibility. In other countries, they have legislated heavily. 

‘So I think there is a middle road, as we have vaccination heavily rolled out, that requires potentially in some areas where there is higher risk to look at them. And one might consider, for example, transport. For those of us that pack ourselves into the tube regularly, we may feel more comfortable if everyone else was asked to wear a mask as well for those very close encounters for potentially periods longer than 15 minutes. 

‘But in the more general societal areas, such as shops, it is going to come down to personal opinions and responsibilities rather than legislation for the longer term.’

Sir Andrew Pollard said it was inevitable that the coronavirus would continue mutating and that new variants would keep appearing forever as the virus adapts to the human immune system.

A virus can only keep circulating if it can be transmitted between living things and to do this it must be able to escape protections in the immune system, Sir Andrew said.

The vaccine chief told MPs: ‘What we’ve been waiting for over the last month with the Delta variant is to find out whether, with two doses of the vaccine, we have good protection against hospitalisation.

‘And the data that came out on Monday from Public Health England that show over 90 per cent protection against hospitalisation is incredibly reassuring in that regard.

‘That’s the key bit that we have to look at with future variants. If that very high protection against hospitalisation continues, despite spread in the community, then the public health crisis is over. And so far, up to Delta, we’re in a very good position, as long as we’ve got people vaccinated.

‘Of course, the WHO [World Health Organization] at the moment, with variants under investigation, we’re up to Kappa so there’s a lot more Greek alphabet letters still to go through. But hopefully we’ll still be in a good position when we get to Omega but we have to keep monitoring it because we don’t know yet.’

Dr Susan Hopkins said that all discussions about Covid now are about variants because almost none of the original ‘wild’ virus is left.

She said in the same meeting: ‘We’re living in a world of variants now. 

‘Everything we see is a variation of the original and, actually, everything we see that’s going to live and not become extinct very rapidly has either got to have a transmissibility advantage or an immune evading advantage.

‘So the challenge, always, is trying to understand which one of these is going to do something as it emerges. We start following and monitoring them when we get to about 30 cases that we can see in the genome sequencing, but that’s not enough to give us real-life data on the impact of vaccines [or] on the impact of transmissibility.’

She said there were more than 30 being investigated in the UK, as well as the four ‘variants of concern’ that are dominant.

And the transmissibility advantage of the Delta variant has led to thousands and potentially tens of thousands of new cases every day – significantly more than are being recorded by NHS Test & Trace, Dr Hopkins said.

‘What we are seeing at the moment are about 7,000 to 8,000 infections per day – that’s what we’re detecting,’ she said.

‘But we know that is less than half of what the true infections are in the community and we’ve measured that out in a number of ways. So the estimate for current infections today is probably in the order of between 15,000 and 25,000 new infections a day. 

‘It doesn’t take very much double to get to large numbers… But what we hope we won’t see – and I think we won’t because of vaccines – is the same number of hospitalisations. 

‘So we will have a much, much greater amount of infection in the community, without seeing the same impact on hospitalisations. But the more infections we do have, the more impact there will be. 

‘If we say 90 per cent [vaccine] effectiveness that means 10 per cent could actually come into hospital. So that means we do need to have some measures in place – both social responsibility measures and the measures that are in place right now to try and hold that peak down, so that we can get as much vaccine into the individuals to reduce symptomatic disease, reduce transmission, then clearly the severity and hospitalisation.’      

The Government advisers’ comments come after independent experts yesterday said achieving zero Covid deaths was ‘impossible’ and that the focus should be to bring them down to levels comparable with flu — which kills roughly 17,000 people in England annually and up to 50,000 in a bad year.  

Boris Johnson and England’s chief expert advisers Professor Chris Whitty and Sir Patrick Vallance have all repeated the line that we will ‘have to learn to live with Covid’ this week, in what seems to be a concerted effort to take emphasis away from the daily death numbers. 

There has been fierce debate about what level of Covid deaths would be ‘tolerable’ when Britain emerges from the shutdown — but one of the Government’s top scientists, Professor Graham Medley, said it was ‘quite possible’ there could be hundreds per day after lockdown.  

Professor Karol Sikora, an expert in medicine at the University of Buckingham, told MailOnline: ‘All deaths are very emotional and upsetting… but it’s important we embrace Covid like we have other viruses because it will become a normal feature in society.

‘We should consider it a success if we bring it [Covid deaths] down to levels comparable with flu deaths every year. We will never achieve zero Covid.’ 

Cambridge University epidemiologist Dr Raghib Ali told MailOnline that once July 19 comes and most of the adult population have been given a vaccine: ‘It’s my view that we will be in as strong a position as we ever will be. Prolonging restrictions beyond that point doesn’t achieve much.’

Asked what an acceptable number of Covid deaths would be, he added: ‘If you look at deaths and excess deaths from influenza, the Government tolerates numbers up to about 50,000 [per year].’

Cabinet Office minister Mr Gove said: ‘Unfortunately there are respiratory diseases, including flu itself, which do every year result in an upsurge of people being taken into hospital, and in some cases suffering tragic consequences.’ In a separate interview with BBC Radio 4, he said ‘we’re going to have to learn to live with Covid’.

Learning to live with Covid could mean making some permanent lifestyle changes, SAGE files have revealed, with experts saying ‘baseline’ measures like mask-wearing and social distancing should remain for the long term.

Scientists on the advisory group said rules ‘are likely to be needed beyond the end of the current road map process,’ The Times reported, or resurgences of the virus could lead to a need to ‘reverse’ the reopening.

It is not clear what levels of Covid deaths the country can expect when lockdown is ended next month, and this has been made less clear due to the outbreak of the highly transmissible Indian variant.

That strain has proven to be at least 60 per cent more infectious than the Kent version and twice as likely to put unvaccinated people in hospital. 

But two doses of the jabs are extremely effective against the mutant virus, reducing hospitalisations by up to 96 per cent. 

The Government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) warned there could have been 250 to more than 500 deaths per day in the third wave this summer if Step 4 of the roadmap out of lockdown went ahead as planned on June 21.

The group did not provide clear projections for what effect delaying the unlocking until July 19 will have on deaths, but its estimates around hospitalisations show the four-week gap could shrink admissions by more than half.

Prominent SAGE member Professor Graham Medley warned that, even with the extra breathing room the delay gives, Britain could still suffer hundreds of Covid deaths every day later in the year. 

Dr Simon Clarke, a microbiologist at Reading University, said this was possible because there will still be millions of people who are vulnerable to the disease even when the entire country is vaccinated.

A small percentage of people who get the jab will still catch and die from Covid, usually because they are frail and have compromised immune systems.  

Dr Clarke told MailOnline: ‘Even if you’ve got a vaccine that cuts deaths by more than 90 per cent, that still leaves almost 7million people not protected.

‘Then there will be even more people who get infected but do not get seriously ill. So that still means lots and lots of virus circulating which poses a risk to those vulnerable 7m.’

But he said emphasis should be taken away from the Covid death figures and focused on NHS capacity, which he said was now the most important metric.

Keith Neal, a professor in infectious diseases at the University of Nottingham, said that once the adult population had been vaccinated with at least once dose against Covid it was no longer the Government’s responsibility to try to save every life.

‘We can’t stay in lockdowns forever, people need to make their own risk assessments. If people are worried about Covid or think they might be vulnerable, then they might decide not to meet up with others or socially distance.’

Backbench Tory MPs, including former prime minister Theresa May and Mark Harper, chairman of the Covid Recovery Group (CRG), criticised the Government for delaying the June 21 unlocking by a month, saying it was moving away from its goal of protecting the NHS. They said Britons had to learn to live with the virus.

However, other experts have said it is the Government’s duty to do prevent all ‘avoidable’ deaths and warned ministers against becoming cocky about the virus. 

Professor Gabriel Scally, a public health expert at the University of Bristol, told MailOnline: ‘What’s an acceptable level of road traffic accidents? We don’t accept those deaths we have inquests to find out what went wrong and how can we put it right.

‘Like any infectious disease it’s our duty to do whatever we can to protect people from it. If we don’t take sensible  action and people get ill then we’re being careless with people’s lives.’

Meanwhile, millions more people in the Midlands and North West of England are being urged not to travel or meet people indoors in an attempt to curb the spread of the Indian Covid variant.

In guidance released last night, roughly 3.6million residents in Birmingham, Liverpool, Warrington and parts of Cheshire were asked to minimise their movements in and out of the affected areas, which are recording higher than average levels of the mutant strain.

But Mr Johnson made no mention of the fresh advice in his dramatic Downing Street press conference last night, where he confirmed England’s final unlocking would be pushed back by four weeks amid fears the mutant strain could overwhelm hospitals.