Your front door is the frontline in coronavirus battle, Health Secretary says

Updating MPs on the effort to tackle coronavirus, Mr Hancock said measures outlined by the Prime Minister yesterday were not just advice.

He said: “They are rules and will be enforced, including by the police with fines starting at £30 up to unlimited fines for non compliance."

Mr Hancock said that "employers should be taking every possible step to make sure that remote working can happen", but added: "I want to be absolutely clear, when people absolutely cannot work from home they can still go to work, indeed it's important that they do to keep the country running."

He said: "We are engaged in a great national effort to beat the virus. Everybody now has it in their power to save lives and protect the NHS.

"Home is now the front line, and in this national effort, working together, we can defeat this disease. Everyone has a part to play."

Mr Hancock, responding to questions from Labour, said sports shops are "not essential retail" before telling MPs: "Therefore they will be closed. I've seen a little bit of the noise that's been going around today around Sports Direct in particular.

"I'd just be absolutely clear that sports kit is not essential over the next three weeks and so we will be closing Sports Direct along with other non-essential retail."

On the issue of fines for companies as well as individuals for flouting the new rules, Mr Hancock said: "Absolutely those fines are available if that is necessary."

On protective equipment, Mr Hancock said: "We are moving heaven and earth and the military involvement is ramping up the delivery of that equipment."

Addressing social care, the Health Secretary said: "The current plan is to have equipment to all social care settings by the end of this week."

It comes after Chancellor Rishi Sunak told MPs struggling self-employed people will have to wait for the Government to come up with a "deliverable and fair" coronavirus support package.

The Government has come under sustained pressure to provide financial help for self-employed workers, who face a dramatic loss of income if forced to take time off for sickness or quarantine.

Mr Sunak told MPs it is "incredibly complicated" to design a system to support the self-employed but insisted that intensive work is going on in Whitehall.

He said ministers are "in dialogue with all the key stakeholder groups".

"There are genuine practical and principled reasons why it is incredibly complicated to design an analogous scheme to the one that we have for employed workers, but ... rest assured that we absolutely understand the situation that many self-employed people face at the moment as a result of what's happening and are determined to find a way to support them," he told the Commons.

"We just need to be confident that can be done in a way that is deliverable and is fair to the vast majority of the British workforce."

Unite union boss Len McCluskey said: "The millions of self-employed and insecure workers across the country will dread being sent home because it means that they will have no wage.

"The Government must work with trade unions to define the tougher isolation rules because we understand the reality of the workplace."

He added: "Without swift clarity for millions of insecure and uncertain workers about whether they can be at work or not, and without removing the agonising choice between health and hardship, then the positive measures announced by the Chancellor last week will be overshadowed and public health efforts will be severely compromised.

"Confused messages and lack of financial support are at odds with the urgency of this health emergency.

"Workers need clear direction and protection from Government now."

Leeds West MP Rachel Reeves, who is also chairwoman of the Commons Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee, has written to Business Secretary Alok Sharma calling for ministers to extend the income protection scheme to cover the self-employed and to increase the rate of statutory sick pay.

She said: "The Chancellor's package last week to support businesses and employees was welcome.

"But with self-employed and freelancers still not covered by support - even as many of their businesses are now subject to lockdown - there is a worrying gap in the Government's strategy to protect these livelihoods which urgently needs to be put right."

Mr Sunak said he would "hope to have something to say very shortly" on the issue, but acknowledged "in terms of something being implemented, that will take longer".

The Prime Minister's official spokesman said it was a "complex issue" but understood the need to act as soon as possible.

"We do appreciate the urgency of the situation and officials are working at pace to find a well-targeted support package," the spokesman said.