A rail passenger was 'left in tears' over social distancing concerns as scores of Brits returned to work this week - with a union boss slamming the Government for "jumping the gun".
Mick Cash, general secretary of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers, said simply "too many people had turned up" to use trains on Monday after Boris Johnson's announcement.
The Prime Minister has been accused of sending out confusing mixed signals after urging those Brits who can return to work to do so this week.
And Mr Cash claims Westminster turned its back on an alleged agreement with the trade union to introduce a more phased approach to allow public transport to cope.
Speaking on yesterday's Question Time, he said: "After the Prime Minister’s speech on Sunday, we saw an increase in usage on the rail network and we saw people – our members – actually have to deal with real problems with passengers.
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"We had one example of a passenger crying because she was worried about an issue over social distancing on a train where too many people had turned up because of what the Prime Minister said on Sunday.
"We hadn’t expected that. We’d done a deal last week, which had an incremental change, phasing in of improvements on train services, increased capacity, but also allowing safe increased capacity.
"And the government jumped the gun. It’s like the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand’s doing.
"We’re talking to DFT [Department for Transport] – are they talking to Number 10?"
During a particularly fiery edition of the BBC discussion programme, Mr Cash clashed with fellow panelists Chief Secretary to the Treasury Stephen Barclay and former Pizza Express chairman Luke Johnson.
Viewer, Daniel, said he is starting a new key worker role within the NHS next week and asked via video link what the government is doing to make sure he is safe on his public transport commute.
Mr Barclay said: "The first thing, for people like Daniel, who is trying to get to work, again it's not just about London it's, for example, light rail in many of our cities, getting that capacity that is used by many key workers and the key thing is to get as many of those services.
"We have put forward measures to do that.
"Part of it is capacity, part of it is encouraging - we've put investment for example into cycling to encourage people to cycle as part of that."
He said a key will be "guidance for people that are using tubes, support for some of Mick's workers in terms of PPE, where that's appropriate, in order that we can use that capacity as safely as possible".
Mr Cash said he wanted to know what businessman Mr Johnson meant by the Government having created a "campaign of fear" around the pandemic.
He said: "People are dying...People have the right to be fearful of what's going on because it's a deadly virus.
"I just wonder, coming out of this...[the Government] hasn't got it right but why it hasn't got it right.
"And why they haven't put clear messaging and clear timetables so that we understand where this is going to end."
