What does Freedom Day mean for YOUR business?

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With the government set to abolish all Covid restrictions – including the legal requirement to self-isolate – employers face major decisions about which policies to adopt. 

Today, small business minister Paul Scully confirmed it would be down to businesses themselves to decide the best way forward, including whether staff should stay at home if they test positive. 

Companies also face a raft of other decisions, from whether to pay for tests when the government stops providing them for free, to questions over mask mandates and social distancing rules. 

Then there’s the question of sick pay, with unions today warning that two million employees could be forced to continue working because they are not paid enough to be entitled to it. 

Firms have a legal duty to protect their employees, leaving them vulnerable to legal action if they allow staff who have tested positive to come into work, or are seen as tolerating an unhealthy environment. 

Here, MailOnline runs through some of the key questions about the world of work after ‘Freedom Day’.  

What is the government planning to announce today and how will it affect my business?

The Prime Minister is expected to unveil his ‘living with Covid’ plan today, with reports it will include the end of universal free tests, as well as the legal requirement to self-isolate.

This means companies will have to decide whether to pay for tests for staff, and set their own self-isolation policies.  

Business minister Paul Scully said it was the right move, and that the PM would be weighing up the balance between a return to normality and keeping people safe.

Mr Scully told Sky News: ‘Infections are coming down quite rapidly, the hospitalisations and deaths are following as well – they tend to lag behind, obviously, the case numbers – but nonetheless you can see the trend within that.’

He said Mr Johnson will be ‘looking at the best advice possible but getting the balance right’.

If a worker gets Covid will they have to self-isolate? 

Today, Paul Scully said it would be down to employers and employees to make decisions over self-isolating.

The business minister told Sky News: ‘I would say that it’s like any illness, frankly, any transmissible illness that you would say stay at home.’

He said if an employee had flu, they would be expected to stay at home, ‘but it’ll be down to themselves or down to their employer’.

Asked what action employees should take if their employers tried to force them in if they were ill with Covid, Mr Scully said: ‘This is why we need to make sure that we’ve got really good guidance for employers.

‘But as I say, there will come a time when the pandemic moves to more of an endemic approach to Covid, in the same way that flu and other viruses are treated, and that’s what we’ve got to get back to.

‘But it’s a fine balance, clearly, and that’s why Cabinet’s meeting this morning, to go through the science, to go through that balance and debate it and then, obviously, the Prime Minister (will) come before Parliament to make his announcement.’

Richard Fox, an employment partner at Kingsley Napley, said staff may need to produce proof that they are ill to avoid coming into the office.   

‘You should tell your boss that you cannot come into work because you have tested positive,’ he said. 

‘The employer cannot force you back in if you’re unwell. But if someone doesn’t come in they can require within a certain number of days that the person gets a certificate from a GP saying whether they are fit to come into work. 

‘And the employer can also require the staff member to be seen to judge whether they are fit to return to work.’  

What if one of my employees has Covid? 

‘They should be allowed to stay at home until they are better – forcing them to come in could raise an issue under health and safety at work legislation,’ says Richard Fox. 

‘Employers are responsible for the health and safety of all their employees, and if they force someone to come and they or other staff suffer they could be liable.’ 

Speaking today, Mr Scully said businesses still had a statutory duty of care.

‘I would say that it’s like any illness, frankly, any transmissible illness that you would say stay at home,’ he said, but he admitted ‘it’ll be down to themselves or down to their employer’.

He said workers should contact Acas if they ‘really think that there is a detriment to them’. 

What can I do if they insist on coming in? Can I force them to go home? 

Stephen Morrall, of Hunters Law LLP, said ‘a number of different legal considerations’ would apply in this instance.  

‘If you have Covid and you are suffering from symptoms, a good employer would ask you not to come into the office,’ he said. 

‘They must have regard to the health and safety of the individual and their other staff. You can’t force somebody not to come in through the door, but if an employee insisted on doing so, the employer would need to decide whether it was reasonable in the circumstances to instruct the employee to return home. 

‘If the employee refused to comply with a reasonable instruction, this could become a disciplinary issue which could ultimately lead to dismissal. In reality, this sort of situation is self-regulating as most employees will not want to work if they are sick.’ 

What can I do if a colleague has it? 

‘If two secretaries came in and one was ill, the other one would not have the authority to ask her to go home, but she could ring up HR and then they would make a decision,’ said Mr Morrall. 

‘If the outcome was to ask the sick employee to go home that is likely to be considered a reasonable request.’

Do businesses still need to test people or ask them to wear masks?

‘The government’s policy is to remove the legal restrictions and persuade people to act sensibly – they want it to be self-regulating, which is a very English approach,’ said Mr Morrall. 

‘In England the law doesn’t prescribe things unless they are necessary, and things are done by consensus. 

‘So once all further restrictions are removed, I will recommend people at my firm take tests periodically during the week. But it will be down to each company, and their employees, to decide for themselves.’

Can a vulnerable colleague sue if they get Covid off an infected person?

‘It’s unlikely – first of all it would be virtually impossible to prove how you’ve caught Covid, because if you go out of your house and come within a metre of someone you could have caught it from anybody,’ said Mr Morrall. 

‘If they come into work they are taking a conscious risk. It’s not like falling off a ladder – which would be a workplace injury.’ 

What if my boss tries to force me in? 

‘Employers can give ”lawful and reasonable” instructions to their employees, but I would question whether this would be a lawful and reasonable reason,’ said Richard Fox. 

‘I suspect there will be some difficult situations to come. It’s a big jump to say that people can come in whether hitherto it has been unlawful to do this.’  

What are my options if I want to stay working from home? 

‘You have the right to request flexible working, but you don’t have the right to work flexibly – there’s a crucial difference there,’ Mr Fox said.  

‘So if you request to continue working from home, there’s a regimen the employer must go through with a corresponding timescale. But you’d expect there to be dialogue in most workplaces. 

‘The issue that employers need to be careful about is whether they are being discriminatory in how they apply the policy.  So if an employee is vulnerable and has been working successfully for the last few years, the employer would need to tread carefully.’    

Will employers have to rip up their existing sickness rules and start again? 

‘This is undoubtedly a big moment for employers,’ said Mr Fox. 

‘When the Government scraps COVID isolation rules, it means employers can no longer rely on Government regulation to provide the groundwork for a system of protection for their workers. Earlier than expected it seems employers are going to need to set the rules for themselves.

‘It may be prudent for these to cover new more potent strains of COVID-19 that may come along or even other infections besides COVID-19.

‘If they do not have appropriate policies already in place, employers may want to consider introducing ‘infection policies’ to set rules and standards for the entire organisation so everyone is clear. For a building contractor the rules may be different to a care home; office-based workplaces may have different rules and needs to a retailer. 

‘It may not be wise to leave it to individual managers to take a view on isolation and vaccine requirements for members of their own departments, as that could lead to legal risk for the employer.’ 

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Boris hails ‘moment of pride’ as he unveils ‘Living With Covid’ plan TODAY axing legal self-isolation… but Tories join Labour and medics voicing alarm about ending free tests and minister says people with virus SHOULD still stay at home

By James Tapsfield for MailOnline  

Boris Johnson hailed a ‘moment of pride’ today as he prepares to end nearly two years of legal Covid curbs despite criticism from Labour and medics.

The PM is gathering his Cabinet this morning to sign off a new ‘Living With Covid’ strategy – with self-isolation set to be axed in England this week.

He is also expected to lay out a timetable for scrapping ‘free’ tests, which have been costing the taxpayer around £2billion a month. 

But while Tories will welcome tearing up the laws that have underpinned the government’s response to the pandemic, some have voiced fears that charging for lateral flows and PCRs could cause chaos.

After wrangling between the Department of Health and the Treasury free testing is likely to be kept in place for over-80s and the most vulnerable.   

There are also concerns that employers and workers face confusion when self-isolation rules lapse. In a round of interviews this morning, business minister Paul Scully said people should still stay at home if they have a ‘transmissible disease’ – although he stressed it had to be discussed between staff and bosses.   

After Cabinet has its say, Mr Johnson is due to make a statement to the House of Commons this afternoon.

He will then hold a coronavirus press conference in Downing Street this evening.

On a critical day that could finally start to draw a line under the pandemic: 

Ministers have denied that the timing of the lockdown announcement is a ‘smokescreen’ to distract from Mr Johnson’s Partygate woes; A leading expert has insisted that Covid booster jabs will not need to be given to all Britons in future; Nicola Sturgeon is due to unveil her pandemic plan tomorrow with doubts over whether Scotland and Wales will follow the same path as England. 

Professor Sir Andrew Pollard, director of the Oxford Vaccine Group at the University of Oxford, admitted this morning that the decisions are finely balanced.

He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme the UK has a ‘wall of immunity now’ thanks to the vaccines ‘but the decision about when and how to reduce restrictions is enormously difficult’.

Prof Pollard said the benefits of restrictions are obvious in ‘reducing chains of transmission, the risks of people getting infected, the burden on the health system’, but the harms of restrictions are harder to assess.

‘They include things, just from a health perspective, like the the impact on hospitals of having staff self-isolating, the inability to perform operations, there will be surgery cancelled today that may be critical for people because of staff who are off work during that period; the impact on education, on the workplace and the economy.

‘The impacts on the economy and mental health will have longer-term consequences. So if we could find a measure that brings all of that together, we could work out the exact right moment (for lifting restrictions).’

Sir Andrew said ‘there isn’t a right or wrong answer to this because we don’t have a measure that helps us get there’.

The director of the Oxford Vaccine Group at the University of Oxford said: ‘One of the key things is, whenever we do reduce restrictions, we need to have a number of measures in place for that period, and one of the most critical is surveillance for the virus, an early warning system if you like, which tells us about new variants emerging and gives an ability to monitor whether those new variants are indeed causing more severe disease than Omicron did.

‘And that is something which can be put in place, and I hope that if there are announcements today that we’ll hear exactly how that will work.’

 Ahead of the crunch day, the PM said: ‘Today will mark a moment of pride after one of the most difficult periods in our country’s history as we begin to learn to live with Covid.

‘It would not be possible without the efforts of so many – the NHS who delivered the life-saving vaccine rollout at phenomenal speed, our world-leading scientists and experts, and the general public for their commitment to protecting themselves and their loved ones.

‘The pandemic is not over but thanks to the incredible vaccine rollout we are now one step closer towards a return to normality and finally giving people back their freedoms while continuing to protect ourselves and others.’

Mr Johnson warned in interviews over the weekend that the £2billion-a-month cost of testing is simply too much for the country to bear.

And Mr Scully suggested this morning that the money will be pumped into the struggling NHS.  

‘If you think what that £2billion might go towards, there’s a lot of other backlogs in the NHS, other illnesses in the NHS, that that money could otherwise go for,’ he said.

‘So for every person that is worried about a test, there may be another person that’s worried about a cancer diagnosis, for instance.’

The legal requirement to isolate if you test positive for coronavirus could end as early as Thursday, which has been dubbed ‘Covid Freedom Day’.

But Labour, unions and medical experts have complained it is simply too early to consider scrapping Covid curbs.

Mr Scully stressed that the government wants to put decisions back into the hands of businesses and workers, saying Britons should not ‘work and live under Government diktat for a moment longer than is necessary’. 

But when asked what people should do if they get Covid he told Sky News that ‘like any transmissible illness you’d say stay at home’. 

‘I would say that it’s like any illness, frankly, any transmissible illness that you would say stay at home,’ he said.

He said if an employee had flu, they would be expected to stay at home, ‘but it’ll be down to themselves or down to their employer’.

Asked what action employees should take if their employers tried to force them in if they were ill with Covid, Mr Scully said: ‘This is why we need to make sure that we’ve got really good guidance for employers.

‘But as I say, there will come a time when the pandemic moves to more of an endemic approach to Covid, in the same way that flu and other viruses are treated, and that’s what we’ve got to get back to.

‘But it’s a fine balance, clearly, and that’s why Cabinet’s meeting this morning, to go through the science, to go through that balance and debate it and then, obviously, the Prime Minister (will) come before Parliament to make his announcement.’

Mr Scully denied the PM’s announcement was a ‘smokescreen’ to distract from the Partygate saga.

‘No, the restrictions are all peeling back on the 22nd of March anyway, so we need to be looking at these measures and we need to be looking at the data in the round,’ he told ITV’s Good Morning Britain. 

Speaking to the BBC yesterday, the PM said lifting the rules did not mean the public should start acting irresponsibly.

People will still be encouraged to stay away from work if they have Covid, but it will no longer be a legal requirement.

He said: ‘It’s very important we should remain careful, and we’re certainly not asking people to throw caution to the winds.

‘We’ve reached a stage where we think you can shift the balance away from state mandation, away from banning certain courses of action, compelling certain courses of action, in favour of encouraging personal responsibility.

‘I think we need resilience, but we don’t need to keep spending at a rate of £2billion a month [on testing], which is what we were doing in January.’

Mr Johnson hoped to never have to order another lockdown, saying: ‘I don’t want to go back to that kind of non-pharmaceutical intervention, I want to be able to address the problems of the pandemic with a vaccine-led approach.’

But he cautioned: ‘Covid remains dangerous if you’re vulnerable and you’re not vaccinated. But we need people to be much more confident and get back to work.’

However, the British Medical Association said the Government should only end self-isolation when case rates are falling.

Dr Chaand Nagpaul, chairman of the BMA council, said: ‘You have at the moment more people dying, more people in the hospital, than you had before Plan B was introduced. It seems a rather odd decision to make.’

Meanwhile, education unions Unison, Unite and the GMB urged the Prime Minister to keep free testing and the requirement to self-isolate.

They warned that failure to provide detailed guidance risks a ‘super-spreader free-for-all’ in schools and workplaces.

Referring to ‘Partygate’ probes, Labour’s health spokesman Wes Streeting said: ‘Boris Johnson is declaring victory before the war is over, in an attempt to distract from the police knocking at his door.

‘The Government should publish the evidence behind this decision, so the public can have faith it is being made in the national interest.’

A government source said vaccines would be available for the ‘foreseeable future’, saying avoiding the return of curbs would depend on the ‘sustained population immunity’ provided by the jabs.

It came as the Government yesterday logged another 25,696 daily Covid cases and 74 deaths.