Keir Starmer rips PM’s ‘roadmap’ apart over lack of clarity

'What the country needs at this time is clarity and reassurance and at the moment both are in pretty short supply.'

Sir Keir Starmer has criticised the prime minister for giving a lack of ‘clarity and reassurance’ in his roadmap out of lockdown.

Speaking in the House of Commons this afternoon, he said: ‘What the country needs at this time is clarity and reassurance and at the moment both are in pretty short supply and at the heart of the problem it seems is that the Prime Minister made a statement last night before the plan was written, or at least finalised.’

He said he acknowledged there were ‘difficult decisions’ to be made but there was now ‘considerable confusion’ in the country after last night’s speech.

For example, he said people had been encouraged to return to work from today but now the ‘roadmap’ said only from Wednesday.

He asked: ‘Will there be guidelines in place to ensure safety at the workplace?’

‘If not, is he seriously asking people to go back to work without the guidelines?’

He said there had also been concern over how people should get to work, as he said yesterday that people should not rely on public transport.

The roadmap said new guidelines on transport would be coming later in the week – but that this might be after people had already returned to work.

Mr Starmer also raised the problem of parents who have caring responsibilities not being able to return to work without any school or childcare.

Turning to the new quarantine rules set to come in, he asked whether it would only apply to people entering the country via air, and asked when the new rules would come into force.

He added: ‘There is not consensus between the UK government and those in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. It raises serious concerns and a real danger of divergence.’

Different rules in different areas made enforcement difficult, he said.

Boris Johnson said people in the UK had followed advice to stay at home and ‘made huge progress in fighting the disease’.

He said we now need to take ‘small, limited steps’ and there will ‘inevitably be complexities’.

People should now ‘stay at home if you can but go to work if you must’, he said.

He said he counted on employers to be ‘reasonable if people can’t go to work because they can’t get the childcare that they need’.

He said that over the last couple of months, plenty of businesses have been working and ‘in a way that respects social distancing’.

‘We will be publishing the guidelines on places of employment today, and transport [guidelines] will be out tomorrow,’ he said.

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