Hannah Miller blog: Is the Tier system unfair on the North?
Looking at a map of the areas in Tier 3, it’s plain to see that the North of England is living with tougher restrictions than the South.
For hundreds of thousands of people and businesses who have been affected by restrictions since the summer, banned from visiting friends and family at home, today’s announcement is upsetting and frustrating. Many are angry and feel they have been treated unfairly.
Here our political correspondent Hannah Miller looks at the arguments surrounding tier decisions in the North West.
ITV Calendar’s Harry Horton has a separate analysis of the situation in Yorkshire.
ITV Tyne and Tees's Tom Sheldrick also looks at whether tier 3 is fair on the North East.
LIVERPOOL CITY REGION + WARRINGTON - moves into Tier 2
Releasing Liverpool City Region into Tier 2 is something of a relief for the people who live there.
But it is a huge relief for local politicians and for the Government, who needed to be able to prove it’s possible to exit from the toughest tier of restrictions.
The city region was the first to enter Tier 3, and at the time Steve Rotheram faced criticism from some for going along with Government plans before a financial package had been agreed (the city region later negotiated a £30m business support deal).
But in recent weeks the focus has been on the city of Liverpool’s mayor Joe Anderson, who agreed to pilot a mass testing scheme that has seen tens of thousands of tests done at sites across the city. The Government has heaped praise on Mayor Anderson for ‘working together’ on what has been an enormous mass testing effort.
There are concerns about whether mass testing is reaching the most disadvantaged parts of the city, but the infection rate has now fallen 74% since the scheme was introduced - a greater fall than anywhere else in the city region, according to the statistics available, and perhaps a sign that it is starting to have an effect.
The Government certainly hopes so - it has pledged that all local areas in Tier 3 will have access to what they now call ‘community testing’ to drive infections down.
But there are questions as to how that will be delivered - it won’t be possible to bring in two thousand troops to every town and city that has the toughest restrictions.
Notably, the city region’s metro mayor Steve Rotheram didn’t mention the mass testing pilot when he welcomed the area emerging into Tier 2. And Warrington, which has also come out of the toughest restrictions, never had access to mass testing at all. But Warrington agreed to enter Tier 3 at a much earlier phase in its wave of infections, and the infection rate is now 206/100,000.
The situation in Liverpool City Region and Warrington proves the difficulty of making conclusions about what strategies work, when we are now seeing the results of not just Tier 3, but national lockdown and mass testing as well.
It also shows how complicated it is to have a city region-wide approach to restrictions, when one local authority is picked out for particular help.
GREATER MANCHESTER - remains in Tier 3
There’s no doubt there are tensions between the Government and Greater Manchester, ever since Andy Burnham loudly refused to accept Tier 3 restrictions in the middle of October.
But the infection rate in Greater Manchester is higher than Liverpool City Region. In London, which some have pointed out is also in Tier 2, the average infection rate is 177/100,000 (and there are more hospital beds available, another factor the Government considers).
Today Andy Burnham accepts the need for Tier 3 as the national lockdown lifts, focussing instead on a call for greater financial support. He points to rapidly falling infections in the hope that by the time of the first review, in two week’s time, cases will have fallen enough to ease off to Tier 2.
But the sense this is political not helped by Matt Hancock’s thinly veiled criticism of Greater Manchester’s metro mayor, and what appears to many to be the Health Secretary’s delight in drawing a wedge between Manchester and Liverpool.
He told the house: "Unfortunately we did see the impact on cases continuing to go up in those areas where local leaders were not working alongside us and it was a sharp contrast to what happened for instance in Liverpool."
In fact it is Conservative MPs who are least satisfied with today’s announcement - Hazel Grove’s William Wragg pointing out Stockport (and neighbouring Trafford) have infection rates either at or below the English average.
He, and Sir Graham Brady, will vote against the restrictions. They want to see decisions made on a local authority basis, which could see Labour-held areas like Rochdale and Oldham remain in Tier 3, while other areas might come out.
That approach has so far been rejected by the Government, but the argument is bound to resurface in a few weeks time. It is then that tensions between Greater Manchester’s political representatives and the Government are most likely to rise, if restrictions aren’t eased.
LANCASHIRE - remains in Tier 3
It is in Lancashire that officials have come out fighting most strongly today, with the County Council’s CEO Angie Ridgewell saying the council is "incredibly disappointed" to have been put in Tier 3 in its entirety.
The authority had hoped that many areas would be released into Tier 2, with only Hyndburn, Rossendale, Burnley, Pendle and Preston staying in Tier 3 (along with Blackburn with Darwen, which is not part of the county council but continues to have one of the highest infection rates in the country).
But there is a sense today that local officials have been ignored and the area misunderstood.
"Government doesn’t understand our large and complex geography", said Angie Ridgewell in a press conference.
Leader of South Ribble Borough Council, Paul Foster, wrote: “To hear the Health Secretary tell the House of Commons that he has engaged with local leaders is simply not true. If the Health Secretary wants to engage with me, then by all means give me a ring or send me an email, but don’t misrepresent what is actually happening, or in this case, not happening.”
In Lancaster, Labour MP Cat Smith said she was ‘furious’ with the decision - the city has an infection rate of 97/100,000 - less than half the national average - raising the spectre again of whether decisions should be made on the basis of more localised data.
When the tier system came into play first time around, officials in Lancashire came to an agreement largely behind-the-scenes, making noise no louder than that of Liverpool City Region. But since then the area hasn’t enjoyed the same profile as Lancashire and hasn’t received the same amount of resource.
People in Lancashire, continuing to face the toughest restrictions, will be keen to see whether the promise of more testing arrives on their streets anytime soon, and what kind of results it can deliver.
ANALYSIS
Today the focus will inevitably be on what people living in different areas will be able to do, and not able to do, from next week when the national lockdown is lifted. In any ‘regional’ policy, arguments over whether boundaries are perhaps inevitable.
But there are also wider questions about why infection rates continue to be high in places like Blackburn and Oldham, whether throughout the crisis the efforts to mitigate Covid infections have reached the most deprived areas, and what more can be done to help people get back to normal life.
Both Greater Manchester and Lancashire are awash with questions as to whether a more targeted, local approach would be more appropriate. While in Liverpool City Region there are arguably some local authorities that have benefited from the broader approach.
In many places, fatigue has set in. It is only a matter of months since an infection rate of 23.9/100,000 was enough to see restrictions imposed in parts of the region - and it’s possible to question whether the decision to lift the first national lockdown and reimpose restrictions were taken at the best time for parts of the North West.
Many have highlighted today that the North West has the lowest R rate in the country, a measure the Prime Minister previously said would be used to decide when to ease off restrictions. But in truth the R number, along with the infection rate, are only two parts of a framework that has been set up by the Government to guide tiering decisions. In the context of that framework and with the data currently available, for the North West today’s announcement doesn’t appear to be unfair.
It does for many, however, mark the next bleak chapter in what has already been a long and difficult saga - with no straightforward route to the end.