Boris Johnson is coming under intense pressure to deliver help for the self-employed, after Jeremy Corbyn warned him that construction workers were continuing to take the train to sites despite knowing they are infected with coronavirus.
Mr Corbyn told the prime minister that everyone was being put at risk because the self-employed could not afford to follow the official advice to stay home.
And he called for building sites to be shut down immediately unless they were doing emergency work.
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It is expected that Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, will outline measures to aid self-employed tomorrow at a Downing Street press conference, as the Resolution Foundation estimated that 1.7 million people in this sector of the economy could lose out financially due to government imposed restrictions.
Mr Corbyn’s demand also came after a series of NHS staff complained that they had been forced to squeeze into overcrowded London Underground trains to hospitals in the capital because so many non-emergency workers were continuing to go to commute into the city.
In an extended hour-long session of prime minister’s questions in the House of Commons, Mr Johnson insisted that the government was “putting its arms around every single employed person in the country”.
He said a package of support for the self-employed would be coming “shortly” and said that companies which ignore government advice will “face the consequences”. An aide later said that companies failing to comply with an instruction to close could face unlimited fines.
But the PM stopped short of ordering construction sites to close, telling the Commons: “What we are not doing is closing down the whole UK economy.”
Making his final appearance at the despatch box as Labour leader, Mr Corbyn told MPs: “Construction sites are still operating on non-emergency work despite the new rules.
“The chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Michael Gove) said yesterday that sites will continue to stay open
“We heard this morning on the radio a call from a self-employed construction worker who said he had contracted coronavirus, he was suffering from it and knew he had got it but had no other option but to get on the London Tube and go onto a site to work, obviously putting himself at greater risk and putting all other passengers and all other workers on that site at risk.
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“Why was he doing it? Because the site had not been closed down and he had no other source of income to feed his family, so he’s going to work putting all of us more at risk as a result.”
Mr Corbyn called on the prime minister to give “unequivocal guidance” now that construction work on non-emergency jobs should stop immediately.
Mr Johnson responded: “Everybody should work at home unless they must go to work unless they have no alternative and can’t do that work from home.”
But he made clear he was not ordering builders to down tools, so long as they can do their work while observing social distancing rules and keeping at least two metres apart fro one another.
He told MPs: “If a construction company is continuing, then clearly they should do so in accordance with the guidance of Public Health England and they have a duty of care to their employees.”
