Is the Cabinet divide on Covid back?

Coffee House Shots

The Spectator

News, Politics, Government, Daily News

4.4 • 2.1K Ratings

🗓️ 22 January 2021

⏱️ 11 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The Guardian reported today that the Department of Health is considering offering a £500 isolation fee to encourage more people with symptoms to get tested. But the Treasury hit back fast saying that they had not seen these proposals and that the idea was 'bonkers'. Katy Balls talks to James Forsyth and Fraser Nelson about what the row says about the conversations behind the scenes.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Get 12 weeks of The Spectator in print and online for just £12.
0:04.7	And we'll give you a £20 £20, Amazon Give Voucher, absolutely free.
0:09.6	Go to spectator.com.uk forward slash voucher.
0:18.0	Hello and welcome to Coffee House Shots for Suspect Hater's Daily Politics Podcast.
0:22.4	I'm Katie Balls and I'm joined by James Mosey and Fraser Nelson.
0:26.3	So, as the deadline all the time in which lockdown could be lifted appears to be pushed further out of sight,
0:33.4	with reports about how we could be in lockdown in the summer still.
0:37.2	We are hearing how the government might try and fix a few problems when it comes to the infection rate.
0:42.5	As we've seen previously in data, compliance is very low when it comes to people actually self-isolating when they've tested positive for coronavirus.
0:50.9	Overnight and the splash of many front papers today is an idea in a Department of Health
0:55.6	paper where it suggests that the government could give a £500 for payment to people to make
1:01.8	sure that they do self-isolate. James, this story got a lot of interest as soon as it emerged last
1:08.6	night and yet it's had a lot of kickback. We've heard it today's
1:12.4	lobby briefing that Downing Street has no plans to do this. Yet it is an idea that has won some
1:17.7	support in the Department of Health and, as we believe it, with the test and trace team. So what exactly
1:23.5	is going on here? The concern that led to this policy is this idea that people get symptoms but don't want to get tested because they know if they get tested, they'll be told
1:31.3	to self-isolate for 10 days and that would lead to a drop in their income for people who
1:36.6	could have worked casual shifts or that sick leave is not that in this country is set at a fairly
1:41.4	low level so people would only get a sick leave payment rather than
1:44.8	their regular salary and so i think the idea here was that you would by the 500 pound payment you would
1:50.0	incentivise people to go and get a COVID test now i think the concern in other parts of government is that
1:56.5	this policy would be too effective that that you would have people going out and getting tested
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Spectator, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of The Spectator and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.