Compass Money: As Cases Rise Across Europe, UK Struggles to Mount Response

A sign gives COVID advice on an almost-empty street in Britain. (Wikimedia)

As Europe enters a second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, countries are once again going into lockdown to diminish the spread of the virus. France substituted its regional approach with a national lockdown, and the German federal government took steps to shut down parts of the economy and decrease social contact. The UK, however, is determined to hold out against nationwide measures and prefers to uphold its widely criticized three-tier regional system for managing the pandemic. 

Under the UK’s three-tier system, local governments would be subject to three escalating levels of restrictions, depending on their number of cases. Devi Sridhar, chair of the Global Public Health program at the University of Edinburgh, suggests that this system both fails to stop the spread of the virus and places unnecessary restrictions on small businesses, saying, “It’s a slow strangulation of both the economy and human health.”

Local leaders also criticize the system, saying that it is too stringent and that they would like more control over what goes on in their communities. Further, many restaurants, part of a depressed hospitality industry, are taking advantage of loopholes in the tier system that allow restaurants to serve people only if their meeting is “reasonably necessary” for work, a restriction that has been criticized as unenforceable.

As cases rise past 23,000 per day in the UK, the government still pursues recovery-based policies, including a stamp duty holiday that offers homebuyers up to £15,000 ($19,400) in tax savings. Mortgage approvals in the UK rose to the highest level since 2007, and banks are raising interest rates to stifle the housing boom. 

Experts in the UK like Sir Jeremy Farrar, a member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, which advises top government officials on pandemic policy, believe that a nationwide lockdown in the UK is long overdue and that any delay will make later restrictions “harder and longer.”

A nationwide lockdown, already likely to be unpopular with local authorities, will be further complicated by the fact that the UK-wide furlough scheme is set to end on October 31. Should a lockdown be enforced, Chancellor Rishi Sunak would have to ensure that businesses forced to close by the government would receive financial support, adding to an already high price tag of the furlough scheme that has been financed largely by deficit spending. 

The UK, it seems, is beginning to come to terms with the warning of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, given in front of the lower house of the German Parliament—“The winter will be hard.”