An MP has urged the government to 'go the whole hog' with new restrictions as he warned that a rise in cases in some areas 'looks like the start of a second wave'.
New local restrictions announced by health secretary Matt Hancock last night (Thursday) ban people from different households from meeting each other indoors.
The rules apply in the whole of Greater Manchester, as well as parts of east Lancashire and West Yorkshire.
It comes after NHS data showed that much of the transmission in these areas was down to friends and family meeting up in private homes.
Yorkshire MP Barry Sheerman said he feared a second wave of coronavirus had already started adding that lockdown measures need to be tougher.
He said the government should be going further in its measures by closing pubs.
“I called for compulsory face masks yesterday. What people cannot understand is you can meet someone in a pub but you cannot see them by popping next door," he said.
“If this is a second wave, and it looks like it is, we should go the whole hog – compulsory face masks and shut the pubs as well."
Mr Sheerman criticised the government saying people stopped following rules after it emerged that Dominic Cummings had travelled to Durham while the government was ordering people to stay home.
“The truth is this government has presided over the worst result for coronavirus deaths in the whole of Europe," he said.
“It’s deplorable and everyone knows people stopped knowing the rules at a critical psychological time – when (Dominic) Cummings got off.
“Since then there has not been any clarity.”
He is not the only MP that has hit out at the government's messaging on the new restrictions.
Labour shadow foreign secretary Lisa Nandy said it was "chaos" following the announcement shortly after 9pm last night.
The Wigan MP told Sky News: “Nobody is arguing that the government shouldn’t move quickly where evidence exits that there has been a spike in Covid cases, and we have certainly seen that in Greater Manchester.
“So, it’s absolutely right that they do this. But I cannot describe to you the level of chaos that there was last night with this announcement.
“Because the Government was essentially asking people to comply with new rules in just a few hours time without any detail about what those rules were going to be.”
