Lockdown rules might “break down” because of a lack of clear explanation, Ruth Davidson claimed.
Her comments on Good Morning Britain sparked another row over the way different governments are trying to lift restrictions.
First Minister Nicola Sturgeon outlined the Scottish Government’s “route map” on Thursday. Changes include more outdoor recreation, visits to family and friends, travel and work.
It followed widespread concerns over the speed of Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s proposals for England, unveiled earlier.
Davidson, who is still an MSP, said the new Scottish plans are “pretty much the same” on social restrictions - despite major differences on Scotland’s separate education system.
“Yesterday’s announcement was a little like watching TV on one of those plus-one channels,” she said. “It was the same stuff, just a fortnight later.”
She also claimed some of the plans are not clear enough.
Davidson said: “I have an 18-month-old son. From phase one which starts on Thursday, he’s allowed to go into his childminder’s house, but he’s not allowed to go into his granny’s house until phase three. That’s the sort of thing people might not understand why that is.
“I think the government has to explain whey they’re saying that. Why can you meet someone in the local park, but you’re not allowed to drive five miles to a different park to see your friend because they live next to that park?”
Davidson added: “People will be much more on board if they can understand why certain things are being said. If it’s just ‘these are the rules’, and there’s no explanation, then I think you do worry it might break down.”
Davidson also criticised the way elderly people have been moved from hospital to care homes, which have suffered a terrible spike in Covid-19 deaths.
“There needs to be an inquiry in each part of the UK because it’s health, and health is devolved,” she said. “We also need to have a more broader inquiry across the whole of the United Kingdom if this - God help us - comes back again.”
Sturgeon, on the same programme, said she doesn’t want party politics to cloud the approach to coronavirus.
Sturgeon said: “One of the easiest things in the world right now is for people to apply hindsight that we didn’t have at the time, and say we should have done everything differently.”
On care homes, she explained: “To have kept older people, with no medical need to be in hospital, where they were, would be putting them at enormous risk as well. Yes, you can apply hindsight but we try to do the best things at the time.
“People said we should have tested more - and again there are legitimate issues, legitimate questions here - but back then we didn’t think testing people without symptoms was something that was scientifically and clinically an effective thing to do. There are still doubts about that but we do it more now because our knowledge of the virus, particularly how asymptomatic people might spread the virus has changed.”
