Pubs and restaurants to feel the brunt of new tier system: Pubs and restaurants will bear the brunt of a new covid tier system so that shops, cinemas and gyms can reopen under plans announced by Boris Johnson on Monday, The Daily Telegraph has reported. The newspaper added: “Hospitality businesses in tier three will only be allowed to offer takeaways, while those in tier two will only be able to serve alcohol with “substantial meals”. The measures – which are significantly tougher than under the previous tier system – were described as “catastrophic” by pub chiefs on Sunday night, with a warning that one million jobs are now on the line. The Prime Minister will announce a revised tier system that will replace the current lockdown on December 3. While there is bad news for pubs, other restrictions will be lighter than under the old tier system. All shops will be allowed to open in all tiers, together with gyms and places of worship, while recreational sport, including golf, tennis and organised team sports can resume. Cinemas will be allowed to reopen in tiers  one and two, and the advice to “work from home if you can” will remain across the country. An announcement will also be made on social mixing, with the “rule of six” expected to return in lower tiers and a ban on household mixing likely to be brought back in tier three. Johnson faces a growing Tory rebellion over the new measures after 70 backbench MPs said they would oppose them in a Parliamentary vote next week unless the government could show they “save more lives than they cost”. The Treasury will also come under intense pressure to provide more help for the hospitality industry after ministers were accused of using pubs and restaurants as a “sacrificial lamb” to save other sectors. Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor, had argued for pubs and restaurants to be allowed to come out of the tier system on December 22 – two days before the tiers are suspended for Christmas – to help them to make up for previous losses, but he appears to have been overruled by Johnson after scientific advisers claimed the hospitality sector was the weak link in suppressing the spread of coronavirus. The 10pm curfew for hospitality will be scrapped, and instead last orders will be called at 10pm with an hour’s drinking up time before a new curfew time of 11pm. But it will be little consolation to businesses that will be forced to close their doors to customers in tier three areas, or those that can only serve alcohol with meals in tier two. Under the old tiers, pubs in tier three could stay open if they could operate as restaurants, while in tier two they could open as normal but customers could not mix indoors with anyone from another household.” Kate Nicholls, chief executive of UK Hospitality, said the news was “far worse than anyone could have anticipated”. She told The Telegraph: “This a cruel decision and it just feels as if the whole sector is being thrown to the wolves. If the tiers had stayed as they were until March, we were already expecting 94% of businesses in tier three and 74% of businesses in tier two to go to the wall. Now we have restrictions that are even worse. We make 25% of our profits in the run-up to Christmas and the government is taking that away. This will have a catastrophic effect on a large number of businesses and all those jobs that were furloughed will now be lost. You are talking about the prospect of a million job losses and 30 to 40,000 premises closing their doors for good.”

Nightclub operators in last-ditch talks with business secretary: Leading nightclub operators will meet the business secretary this week in a last-ditch attempt to thrash out a potential lifeline for the beleaguered sector. According to The Telegraph, bosses from Deltic Group, Fabric, Revolution Bars and Slug & Lettuce owner Stonegate Pub Company will meet Alok Sharma on Tuesday in the hope that the industry can secure a bailout following eight months of closure. Peter Marks, chief executive of Deltic, which is the UK’s largest nightclub operator, said the industry has not been treated as a priority. “Every day you hear these announcements coming out from the government supporting this and supporting that and there’s still nothing for us, we’ve got crumbs.” Marks said the talks with Sharma were “crucial” in securing a buyer for the company. “I will have no problem getting one of these investor groups to back the business in the future if they know there is a safety net. If there isn’t, then chances are that this becomes just a bet, a punt,” he said. A BEIS spokesman said: “Since March, we have delivered over £11bn of grants to around 900,000 businesses. In October we announced further support for businesses like nightclubs which have had to stay shut, enabling them to stay afloat.”

Caring – Ditch covid curbs or face explosion of job losses: One of Britain’s leading restaurateurs has urged the government to abandon blanket covid-19 restrictions or face “an atomic bomb” of unemployment in January. Richard Caring, who owns chains including Bill’s and The Ivy Collection, told The Times rules that had been “put in place without a great deal of thought” had turned out to be “a killer” for the hospitality industry. “I think the government should take some time and look at things in detail rather than having blanket situations that make no distinction between different areas,” he added. Speaking before the chancellor confirmed yesterday that the 10pm curfew was likely to be scrapped, Caring questioned the government’s motives, saying: “When they say we’ll close pubs, we’ll close restaurants, we’ll put a curfew in, it’s done not from a position of knowledge but from a position of politics. A blanket curfew isn’t correct.” Caring was particularly critical of Michael Gove, minister for the Cabinet Office. “When it was announced we were going into lockdown until 2 December, the very next day we have the cabinet minister coming out and suggesting it may well be extended again. If anybody was thinking of investing or looking for hope down the road, they absolutely kiboshed it. A statement like that means more people become unemployed.” After visiting eight cities, including Glasgow, Liverpool and Leeds, he said it was obvious from the number of boarded up restaurants and pubs that the situation was critical and he predicted a “big explosion” in January. “They should take some time to consider it. They’re not aware of the permanent damage being done throughout the country.”