The Government's Eat Out to Help Out scheme contributed to a second wave of coronavirus infections, according to a new study.
In August, the government offered Brits a 50% discount of up to £10 per head on meals between Mondays and Wednesdays to kick-start the economy and encourage people to spend money again after the national lockdown.
But research conducted by the University of Warwick suggests that between 8% and 17% of newly detected infection clusters could be linked to the scheme during that period.
Areas where there was a high uptake of the scheme saw an increase in new infections about a week after it started, the study found.
Meanwhile, the research said those same areas saw a decline in new infections a week the discount offer finished.
Thiemo Fetzer, a professor of economics who published the study, said: "The Eat-Out-to-Help-out scheme, hailed as an economic cure for the ailing sector, may have substantially worsened the disease."
Toby Phillips, executive director of the Oxford Covid-19 response tracker at the Blavatnik School of Government, told Sky News : "The Eat Out to Help Out scheme was part of a general package of policy and communications over the summer that encouraged people to go out and adopt a 'back to normal' mindset.
"That creates this whiplash when one month you're being told 'get out there, have confidence, go back to business, back to normal' - and in the next month there's a new tier scheme being put in place."
"We should not subsidise people to gather indoors.”
Britain's finance ministry said it did not recognise the findings of the study.
"Many other European counterparts have experienced an uptick in cases - irrespective of whether similar measures for the hospitality industry have been introduced," a spokesman for Treasury said.
The government subsidised about 100 million meals in August and the scheme was so effective some businesses continued offering the half-price discounts even after the government funding ended.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson earlier this month defended the scheme for helping to protect millions of jobs in the hospitality industry but conceded that it may have had an impact on infections.
He told the BBC last month: "I also think that it is important now, irrespective of whether Eat Out To Help Out you know, what the balance of there was, it unquestionably helped to protect many... there are two million jobs at least in the hospitality sector.
"It was very important to keep those jobs going.
"Now, if it, insofar as that scheme may have helped to spread the virus, then obviously we need to counteract that and we need to counteract that with the discipline and the measures that we're proposing.
"I hope you understand the balance we're trying to strike."
