North needs postcode-specific clarity on virus rather than insults – The Yorkshire Post says

The response of Ministers, and they do deserve sympathy for the scale of the challenge, needs to be underpinned by three traits – clarity, consistency and compassion.

Yet none were self-evident when the 15.2 million people who live and work in the North, and who this newspaper has championed, woke yesterday to news, leaked to the London-based media, that pubs, restaurants and other parts of the hospitality sector could be shut from next week to try to stop Covid’s spread.

Leaving aside the scientific justification, which is still awaited, there was chaos, confusion and concern as families and communities try to work out what these measures will mean for them.

That is why the Government’s new ‘traffic light’ alert system, also due to be introduced next week, must coincide with Boris Johnson – and the relevant public health chiefs – sending a joint letter, by post, to every affected household confirming the actions that each household needs to take.

Cost should not be a factor, Mr Johnson’s letter to every household at the start of the pandemic cost £5.7m to deliver, but the benefits will be potentially priceless if the detail is postcode-specific – even neighbouring streets here can be the subject of separate and conflicting sets of rules – and that this opportunity is used to issue bespoke guidelines and advice to every local community based on their current Covid threat level.

Not only will it provide much of the clarity that this newspaper is calling for, but it will repair some of the damage done by a leaked report which characterised the whole of the North as a homogenous wasteland at a time when Ministers need the public’s trust and forbearance more than ever.

And this brings us onto the politics after the London government briefed its favoured friends in the capital’s media about the North’s future.

It led to this region being characterised, unhelpfully and unnecessarily, as an irritating inconvenience when Covid’s virulence could be linked to people having to go to work out of financial necessity.

This disrespect, discourtesy and disdain would also not have occurred if there was a full-time, fully fledged, Minister for the North in the London Cabinet acting as a conduit between the London Government and this region’s metro mayors and local leaders who know their communities best of all.

It’s also dishonourable for Ministers to back the devolution of powers to mayors on one day – and then ride roughshod over them the next.

They can’t have it both ways and are now on notice that the North – for if they treat us as one we will respond as one – will not forgive, or forget, this regrettable episode.

However the immediate priority is public health and the Prime Minister writing that letter to every household in the North, and other affected areas, setting out what he expects of them before coronavirus claims more livelihoods. And lives.

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Thank you

James Mitchinson