Shadow Chancellor challenged on Labour's 'circuit break' lockdown plan

23 October 2020, 13:44

Shadow Chancellor Anneliese Dodds challenged on 'circuit break' lockdown plan

This is the moment LBC's Nick Ferrari challenged Labour Shadow Chancellor Anneliese Dodds on Labour's call for a 'circuit break' lockdown.

Earlier this month, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer called for the two to three-week "circuit break" national lockdown after the Prime Minister rejected the request from his top scientists.

Referring to Labour's circuit break plan, Nick said: "So there would be no tiers, there would be a national lockdown and we'd all put nail planks across our front door and stay indoors. That's how Labour would have it, isn't it?"

The Shadow Chancellor responded: "Well, no actually. What we want would help to drive down infection. But the window of opportunity for that is running out, unfortunately. If it was planned to take place over the half-term holiday that would have minimised the impact on children and their parents.

"That would have enabled us to drive down infections so that we could have had a fighting chance to be getting back to a situation with fewer restrictions in different parts of the country.

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"The Government has chosen not to do that. I think that's the wrong the decision because it's really harming us economically to have this system of rolling restrictions.

Mrs Dodds added: "Let's face it. Half of our country now is under additional restrictions. We're seeing them being imposed in lots of other parts of the country as well.

"The Government may well be forced into another lockdown anyway and, if they're forced into it [and] it's not a planned one, then that's going to be much more damaging than having a planned one for a short period to get those infections down."

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The Labour MP for Oxford East also gave Nick her response to Chancellor Rishi Sunak's a new scheme to support businesses amid the Covid crisis.

She said: "Yet again we've seen really quite a last-minute set of announcements being made. Obviously, we've seen that winter economic plan now being changed three times and we're not even out of the Autumn.

"I am pleased that we've seen some shift on the wage support scheme in particular. That really looked like it wasn't going to work for lots and lots of businesses..."