Many Yorkshire pubs and restaurants won’t survive as lockdown continues in all but name - Andrew Vine

No customers at the carefully-spaced tables sheltered by a gazebo, no return to work for the staff, and quite possibly no future, according to one of the barmen I bumped into after the imposition of Tier 3 restrictions on West Yorkshire meant the pub will remain closed indefinitely.

Yet just yards away, hairdressers and nail bars where staff are in much closer proximity to their customers than in a pub or restaurant will reopen and have a fighting chance of surviving the winter.

The inconsistencies and sheer unfairness of these tiered restrictions so many of us in Yorkshire are compelled to live under will be at the heart of today’s debate in the Commons.

It may well be that there is a substantial Tory rebellion, but I’m not banking on that resulting in West and South Yorkshire being downgraded to tier two so that hospitality businesses can reopen.

Boris Johnson will most likely get his measures through Parliament tonight thanks to his panicky fudge at the weekend in saying that restrictions will be eased on December 16 and possibly scrapped by February.

That is probably enough to quell a humiliating mass revolt in the ranks of his own MPs, but it’s of no help to businesses in our county facing ruin.

The owners of pubs and restaurants I know had been counting on at least some Christmas trade to keep them afloat into the New Year, when, as we all hope, mass vaccination holds out the prospect of a return to near-normality.

But not now. Thanks to a draconian, badly-targeted and ill thought-out system of restrictions, many are not going to survive. Even if business rate relief is extended – as it should be – that won’t be enough of a lifeline.

And the fallout from closures is likely to claim jobs in the supply chains for the hospitality industry as well.

In Yorkshire, one of the great business success stories of recent years has been the growth in independent breweries, dozens of them producing excellent craft beers and some moving into running their own pubs as well.

What’s to become of them, given that the hospitality industry is being pulverised by a lockdown in all but name?

Pubs and restaurants have become the victims of a tier system that is too blunt an instrument in its current form.

It’s not good enough to lump entire regions together in the highest tier of restrictions when – on the evidence of official figures – there are wide variations in infection rates within them.

The most glaring example of the inconsistent application of restrictions is London, which in parts has rates far higher than the areas of the north coloured bright red on the maps of where there are the most Tier 3 restrictions.

If the region-wide policy of restrictions had been applied consistently by the Government, then the whole of the capital would be in Tier 3. But it isn’t.

It’s in Tier 2, meaning pubs and restaurants can open.

I don’t think it’s excessively cynical to suggest that London has been treated so leniently because the Government is far more scared of a backlash from the capital than it is by anger in, say, Leeds or Sheffield. Pubs going out of business in Shoreditch or Covent Garden is just too close to home for those in Government. The same thing happening in Doncaster or Halifax feels far enough away to be rather less concerning.

But not to any of us who live in Yorkshire’s towns and cities, grieving for the loss of the friendly local or the family-run restaurant that has been in business for generations. It makes no sense to put businesses at risk in areas of relatively low infections by forcing them to remain closed just because they happen to be in the same county where there are hotspots.

Restrictions need to be much more tightly-focussed, not least because that way action to suppress rates of infection can be precisely targeted through testing and tracing. Nor are fortnightly reviews of the tiers acceptable. This should be done weekly, with the aim of allowing hospitality to reopen as quickly as possible.

A balance between saving lives and preserving livelihoods is still not being struck by the Government.

When facing a challenge from his own MPs – as he is today – Boris Johnson ducks and dives to avoid embarrassment by offering concessions. But these political games are of absolutely no help to hospitality businesses facing bankruptcy because of a scattergun approach to restrictions that gives too little weight to what is happening at regional and local level.

The Prime Minister may have done enough to save his own blushes in Parliament tonight. It’s a pity he isn’t doing more to save pubs and restaurants.

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