New details revealed on which workers may be exempt from isolation rules
The government has released more details about which fully-vaccinated workers may be exempt from isolation if they are told to quarantine after coming into contact with a positive COVID case.
On Thursday evening, the government published a list of 16 sectors which the new guidance of completing daily coronavirus tests rather than quarantining would apply to.
These included energy, civil nuclear, digital infrastructure, food production and supply, waste, water, veterinary medicines, essential chemicals, essential transport, medicines, medical devices, clinical consumable supplies, emergency services, border control, essential defence outputs, and local government.
Laboratory staff – particularly those working with medicines – are among those allowed to be exempt from isolation rules
Now, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) has expanded on this further, outlining the positions the exemptions would apply to.
DEFRA says the exemptions would be “subject to all other mitigation options being exhausted”.
The roles include:
Agri-food chain:
• Manufacturing maintenance engineers, quality assurance technicians, and highly skilled supervisors
• Specialist reach truck drivers – only where the use of this type of truck is essential in the movement of critical goods
• Official vets, meat hygiene inspectors, poultry health inspectors, environmental health officers and certifying support officers necessary for preventing immediate risk to food safety or animal welfare in processing plants
Waste:
• Staff essential to the removal and processing of healthcare, hazardous, or municipal waste
• Staff essential to the running of incineration plants
• Landfill operators
Water and wastewater:
• Water engineers, staff/contractors working on repair of mains/supply interruption, chemical and technical specialists, emergency response practitioners, and control room staff whose immediate attendance at work is essential to maintaining critical services
Veterinary medicines:
• Batch testing laboratory staff and qualified persons essential to the batch release of medicines
• Laboratory staff essential to the production of veterinary medicines
Incident response and prevention:
• Government vets and official veterinarians responding to animal disease outbreaks or cases of serious animal health/welfare concern
• Environment agency staff operating the Thames Barrier and other critical flood defence assets, and environment agency staff on response teams in regional areas across the country to ensure effective protection of life and property in the event of a flood or other major incident
• Navigation authority staff whose roles/tasks include essential maintenance on assets with high consequence of failure and/or essential health and safety activity which mitigates risk of loss of life
Environment agency staff who manage critical flood defences are also part of the new testing scheme
Those who work in the roles above will be able to leave their COVID-19 isolation to travel to work and do their jobs after a negative daily test but must remain at home otherwise and go straight into quarantine if they receive a positive result.
It will only apply to workers who are fully vaccinated – and 14 days after their second coronavirus jab.
Earlier in the week the government said the exemptions would only be open to a “limited number of named workers” in critical services and would run until 16 August.
This is when a wider relaxation for fully vaccinated contacts is set to take effect.
Workers have also been warned they will only be exempt if their employer has received a letter from the government on which their name is listed.
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Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng said the government is ‘very concerned’ about the ‘pingdemic’ situation, but the list of exempt workers will be ‘quite narrow’.
The guidance published on Thursday evening stressed the process “will not cover all or in most cases even the majority of workers in critical sectors”.
It added that those identified as close contacts of a positive case of the virus should only go to work if their absence would lead to the “loss or compromise” of “critical elements of national infrastructure”.
If employers believe the absence of their staff would have this impact they are advised to contact the relevant government department.
Also on Thursday, Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng admitted the government is “very concerned” about the numbers of people being pinged by the NHS app.
His comments come as retailers warn they are under “increasing pressure” to keep shelves fully stocked amid staff shortages caused by the “pingdemic”.
Politics
‘Shy’ Reform voters in Labour areas led to Farage’s party winning by-election, Harriet Harman says
“Shy” Reform voters in Labour areas led to Nigel Farage’s party winning the Runcorn by-election by just six votes, Labour peer Harriet Harman said.
The Runcorn and Helsby seat, created in 2024, went to Reform UK’s Sarah Pochin who defeated Labour candidate Karen Shore by six votes.
Reform overturned a 34.8% majority gained by former Labour MP Mike Amesbury last year before he stood down earlier this year after he punched a constituent on a night out.
It is the closest by-election result since records began in 1945.
Read more: Badenoch apologises to Tory councillors
Labour peer and former minister Baroness Harman told Beth Rigby on the Electoral Dysfunction podcast: “If we’d have known it was so close, I, myself, would have gone on extra time there and got those six votes.
“So, there’s a real level of frustration and I’m sure there’ll be a post-mortem, but I think there’s a lot of talk about shy Reform voters in Labour areas.”
In the local elections, running at the same time, the Conservatives lost control of all 18 councils it was contesting, with Reform taking eight of those.
The party also won two of the six mayoral contests – Reform’s first two mayors.
Harriet Harman on the Electoral Dysfunction podcast
Baroness Harman said Labour now has “got to get on with delivering on the health service” and pointed out the minimum wage increase and breakfast clubs are only just being rolled out.
But she said the government also needs “more of a story” instead of just telling people to “bear with us” while it fixes what the Conservatives did.
“It seems to be that Farage has got no delivery, as yet, and all the story, whereas the government is really getting on with delivery, but it hasn’t got a big enough story about what that fits,” she said.
Read more: Reform’s political earthquake is now shaking our political system
An installation represents a bus stop during Reform UK’s local elections campaign launch in Birmingham. Pic: Reuters
She added that “Blue Labour” MPs – a socially Conservative wing of the Labour Party – “will be emboldened to press for further action” on issues like immigration, which they want to see a tougher stance on.
“There’s been grumbling about the big salience of the concerns of the winter fuel payment, but I don’t see there being any change on that,” she said.
Baroness Harman said she does not think the by-election and local election results were “utterly predictable” and will not lead to any splits or instability within the party.
Kemi Badenoch has apologised to Tory councillors who lost their seats after Reform made massive gains at the Conservatives’ expense in Thursday’s local elections.
The Conservative leader said she knew it was “disappointing” and that she was “sincerely sorry”, but added: “We are going to win those seats back – that is my job now.”
The Tories lost overall control of all 18 councils they had been in charge of that were up for election. There were 23 councils in the race in total.
Politics latest: Sky News analysis shows Reform surge in estimated national vote
A particularly bad loss was Buckinghamshire, which has been under Tory control since 1973 when local government was reorganised. The Conservatives lost overall control by just one seat after losing 29 seats.
Reform, which has never run in local elections before, gained eight councils from the Tories, one that had no overall control previously and one from Labour – the only Labour council up for grabs in this election.
Nigel Farage with the new Runcorn and Helsby MP Sarah Pochin. Pic: Reuters
The Lib Dems won Shropshire from the Tories, as well as Cambridgeshire and Oxfordshire – both of which had no overall control before.
The Conservatives had one win, with Paul Bristow being voted in as Cambridgeshire and Peterborough mayor, previously held by Labour.
Reform’s first major win of the election was the Runcorn and Helsby by-election where Labour lost to Reform by six votes. It was triggered by ex-Labour MP Mike Amesbury resigning after his conviction for punching a constituent.
Sir Keir Starmer said he “gets” why his party suffered defeat there and the results show “we must deliver that change ever more quickly, we must go even further”.
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Tories suffer heavy defeats
Addressing the Conservatives’ abysmal results, Ms Badenoch said: “Other parties may be winning now, but we are going to show that we can deliver and that we are on course and recovering.
“But they [the public] are still not yet ready to trust us,” she added.
“We have a big job to do to rebuild trust with the public.
“That’s the job that the Conservative Party has given me, and I’m going to make sure that we get ourselves back to the place where we are seen as being a credible alternative to Labour.”
Read more:
Reform’s political earthquake is now shaking our political system
Reform wins two new mayoral contests
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Farage: ‘This is Reform-quake’
Ms Badenoch said Labour’s election results showed Sir Keir Starmer “is on course to be a one-term prime minister”.
However, when asked if she would still be leader at the next general election, Ms Badenoch dodged the question and said: “I’m not playing all these questions that the media loves to ask about my future.
“This is not about me.”
She insisted she was the right person to lead the Conservatives, as she was chosen by the party’s members.
“I told them it wouldn’t be easy, I told them it would require a renewal and rebuilding of our party,” she said.
“That doesn’t happen in six months. I’m trying to do something that no one has ever done before, which is take their party from such a historic defeat back into government in one term.”
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