To deal with the coronavirus crisis, the Govt. wants more powers and it wants them for a long time. I wonder why because they don’t seem to be making any decisions and they pretty much have the powers they need. They have a page on Gov.UK describing what they think they need, and Big Brother Watch have published their take on it, as have Inclusion London. The proposed laws reduce the standards for staff in the NHS, make changes to i.e. reduce duties under the Mental Health Acts and Social Care laws, they make it easier to dispose of the dead, postpone the May elections, take powers to close events and venues, and give the police & immigration officers powers to detain people. It also abolished the three day waiting period for SSP. We should consider their failure to offer security to those in work who may lose their jobs, fall sick or have to stop work to look after children or elderly relatives. This will also highlight the appallingly low levels of statutory sick pay and redundancy payments, not to mention the 2 year employment longevity requirement for redundancy payments. No-one is talking about those living on savings who will be hurt by the reduction in the BoE interest rate to 0.1%, by the collapse in the stock market (the FTSE 250 is down by over 40% in the month), and even their business support programme is based on loans and not grants. (This blog is based on one written yesterday and has been published before I have read today’s announcement offering an income for those not working.)
The featured image is taken from Pixabay and is CC0.
The Government have closed the pubs and schools. It must be serious.
They have also announced a huge quantitative easing programme and decided to underwrite sick pay and 80% of wages for those that cannot work because of the pandemic. (Obviously the latter does little for those in poverty, and nothing for the self employed and those made redundant through business failure. )
This thread doesn’t comment on the appalling management of the Govt’s strategic response and its slow movement from a herd immunity to contain & delay. This can be read about elsewhere.
I normally pursue a notes on the wiki, opinion on the blog and have just updated my wiki article, called First Thoughts … to talk about the Govt. and Opposition’s response to the crisis.