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People will still be asked to stay at home despite the instruction having been dropped from the government’s coronavirus slogan, communities secretary Robert Jenrick has said.
Boris Johnson is expected to tell the country on Sunday evening to “stay alert, control the virus and save lives”.
It is a softening of the previous instruction that people “stay at home, protect the NHS, save lives”.
Labour has said the new message lacks “clarity” and will leave the public “puzzled”.
Speaking to Sky News on Sunday, Jenrick said the government wanted to “slowly and cautiously restart the economy”.
“We want now to have a message which encourages people to go to work, as we begin to ease some of the lockdown measures to take advantage of those but always to be cautious,” he said.
But speaking to the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show later this morning, Jenrick said “staying at home will remain an absolutely essential element of that strategy but it will be broadened out”.
“Stay alert by staying home as much as possible,” he said. “But stay alert when you do go out by maintaining social distancing, washing your hands, respecting others in the workplace”.
Nicola Sturgeon has said she will continue to use the “stay at home” message to tackle the coronavirus outbreak in Scotland signalling a rift in the UK-wide response.
Mark Drakeford, the first minister of Wales, also told Sky News that the stay-home message had “not gone away”.
Jon Ashworth, the shadow health secretary, said this morning there was “no room for nuance” when it came to government slogans.
“This virus exploits ambivalence, it thrives on ambiguity,” he said. “People will be looking at it slightly puzzled, questioning what does it mean to stay alert, what are the government saying with that?
“I think the stay at home message is easily understood and that is the strength and beauty of that message.”
Lib Dem acting leader Ed Davey has demanded the government to “publish the evidence” it has used to inform its new “stay alert” slogan.
He added: “Changing the slogan now, while in practice keeping the lockdown in place, makes the police’s job near impossible and may cause considerable alarm.”
On Monday, the government will publish a 50-page document outlining to MPs the full plan to cautiously re-start the economy after figures suggested the overall death toll for the UK has passed 36,500.
The shift in messaging will come amid concerns that workers may not feel comfortable resuming their roles.
That could be a test for ministers, with unions warning that they might not recommend their millions-strong membership to resume their roles if safety is not assured.
“The trade union movement wants to be able to recommend the government’s back-to-work plans,” Unison, Unite, the GMB, Usdaw and the Trades Union Congress wrote in a letter to The Observer.
“But for us to do that, we need to ensure that ministers have listened and that we stay safe and save lives at work too.”
The government has also failed to meet its own 100,000 tests per day target for the seventh day in a row, saying there were 96,878 in the 24 hours up to 9am on Saturday.
And around 50,000 coronavirus test samples had to be sent to a US laboratory earlier this week after “operational issues” in the UK lab network led to delays in the system.