Rishi Sunak unveils new wages scheme as lockdown looms again

Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor, has unveiled a new furlough-style scheme to pay workers' wages, with Britain braced for stricter lockdown restrictions to be imposed from the middle of next week.

Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, will spend this weekend fine-tuning a plan to divide England into three different tiers according to the severity of local coronavirus outbreaks.

Mr Johnson is weighing up whether hairdressers and leisure centres should be closed alongside pubs, bars and restaurants in the worst-affected areas.

In regions with lower infection rates, he is considering staggering the curfew times at which hospitality venues have to close.

It comes amid growing opposition to the current 10pm curfew, set to be voted on on Tuesday, and other draconian measures feared to be holding back an economic recovery.

Downing Street hopes the three-tier "traffic-light" system will see off a rebellion in the Commons.

On Friday, Mr Sunak announced that hundreds of millions of pounds a month will be spent paying workers at companies forced to close by new coronavirus restrictions.

The cash is not limited to pubs, bars and restaurants, fuelling fears that closures will be widened to further businesses in a return to a full-scale lockdown.

The scheme will see taxpayers cover two thirds of the wages of staff in firms that have to close for up to six months, and there is no limit on how much it will cost.

In a significant expansion of the job support scheme, employees will no longer have to work part-time in order to qualify for the wage subsidy. Businesses ordered to close prior to any fresh additional restrictions will also qualify, throwing venues such nightclubs, which have been shut since March, a vital lifeline.

The Chancellor admitted he did not know how much the scheme will cost, although Treasury sources estimated it would be hundreds of millions of pounds per month. 

"We obviously won’t know the exact take-up of something like this because as we enter an uncertain period the exact scope of any restrictions is uncertain at this time," he said.

It came as Professor Jonathan Van-Tam, England's deputy chief medical officer, told MPs and peers on Friday that the UK is back where it was in March as hospitals fill up with coronavirus patients.

Prof Van-Tam said the North-West's intensive care beds were "two to three doubling times" away from capacity. A separate Government-backed study said hospital admissions in the area could be doubling every week.

On Friday, Professor Graham Medley, who sits on the Government's scientific advisory panel Sage, also warned that Britain is in a "similar position to early March" and that "thousands will die unless we do something".

The Government said that, as of 9am on Friday, there had been a further 13,864 lab-confirmed cases of coronavirus in the UK.

It brings the total number of cases in the UK to 575,679. There are now 3,090 Covid-19 patients in England's hospitals. On March 23, the day lockdown was imposed, there were 3,097.  

Under plans to be set out by Mr Johnson on Monday, England will be partitioned into three different tiers from the middle of next week according to the severity of local virus outbreaks.

The Telegraph understands the top tier – where cases are the highest – could still see hairdressers and leisure venues joining pubs, bars and restaurants in being forced to close.

The public could be advised not to travel to top tier areas, although it is not clear whether this would be enforced. Officials are weighing up varying the curfew times at which restaurants and pubs are forced to close according to the severity of local cases.

This could see hospitality venues in areas where cases are low being allowed to stay open until 11pm in tier one, falling to 10pm in tier two.

Local city leaders are braced for Leeds and Sheffield to join other northern cities such as Manchester, Newcastle and Liverpool in the tier in which restrictions are the tightest. However, a final decision is not expected until the weekend amid ongoing wrangling between health officials and ministers.

Separately, the London Mayor, Sadiq Khan, said further restrictions in the capital were "inevitable" with the number of cases now at a tipping point.

On Tuesday MPs will vote on new lockdown plans, alongside the controversial 10pm curfew for bars and restaurants, before the new restrictions come into force on Wednesday.

However there was pressure to bring forward any measures from Wednesday from Mr Johnson's own ministers and his medical advisers. One minister told The Telegraph: "I don't think we have even until Monday to wait."