UK Edition
Retailers have intensified pressure on ministers to relax the two-metre social distancing rule, with a warning from Britain’s leading business lobby that it threatens to push some businesses “over the edge of a cliff”.
The intervention by John Allan, the outgoing CBI president, who is also the chairman of Tesco, comes as non-essential stores prepare to open their doors for the first time in three months tomorrow, in the middle of an economic collapse.
Mr Allan warned that social distancing “has an enormous impact on the capacity of an awful lot of businesses”, and contrasted the UK’s restrictions with less stringent one-metre guidelines from the World Health Organization.
The CBI chief said there was “a dialogue going on with the Government about how necessary it is and for how long it is necessary to retain two metres” and voiced hopes that it would be lifted “gradually and at a sensible time”.
Mr Allan added: “That is important as we are facing a very bad autumn in terms of lost jobs and unemployment and there are two things we can do to mitigate that. One is not to drive more businesses over the edge of a cliff than are already heading in that direction, and that is where social distancing has an important role to play, but also calling on the Government to lead the way in creating programmes for new jobs.”
Dire jobs figures are set to show unemployment rising by one million in April, despite 1.1m employers furloughing 8.9m jobs so far. It will fuel pressure on Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
Bricks-and-mortar retailers are expected to lose £5.3bn to online rivals this year, according to figures from Ascential’s consultancy Edge. Tech colossus Amazon alone is set to rake in an extra £2bn in UK sales, totalling £31.1bn by the end of the year. Online sales are expected to hit £79bn, up from £66.3bn in 2019.
Steve Baker, a Treasury select committee member, said: “If two metres isn’t relaxed to one-metre, it’s hard to see how our economy recovers.”
Simon Arora, the billionaire chief executive of discounter B&M, underlined the stakes faced by retailers as he warned keeping the two-metre social distancing rule over the 6-8 week festive period “would take away Christmas for a large number of retailers”.
“It’s almost impossible for bricks-and-mortar retailers to achieve anything close to their budgeted trading through that important golden quarter unless we get two metres down to 1.5 or one-metre. It makes a difference,” he said.
His remarks echo calls from pub and restaurant bosses to relax the regime to replicate measures that have been adopted in Europe, such as France’s one-metre rule or Germany’s 1.5-metre distancing.
A group of ministers nicknamed the “Save Summer Six”, who have been agitating for pubs and restaurants with outside spaces to start trading as soon as possible, are also pushing for the relaxation of the rule.