I live in Greater Manchester, in Wigan, as you well know, and we’ve been in almost continuous lockdown for the last 12 months. I got the sense a very long time ago that people were deleting the app, turning off the contact tracing. People are trying to do their best, they’re trying to follow the rules, but I totally understand that getting pings all the time and being told to self-isolate, especially when there’s no proper payment for that, people have been asked to take annual leave at the moment, they’ve run out of annual leave so they, they’re being docked pay, they’re worried about their families. I guess what I would say to them is that I totally sympathise, do your best, try to follow the rules, but what we need is the government to step up.
Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak that got a lot of grief, understandably, for saying that they weren’t going to participate in this system, that they were going to have an opt out. But actually what we should be doing is making sure that everyone has access to that opt out, that you can test, instead of having to self-isolate. That would make a huge difference to the economy, but it would make a huge difference for a lot of families around this country as well.
