THE CONSERVATIVES must "distance" from a councillor who suggested a £500 payment to self-isolate was acting as an incentive for people to spread coronavirus, Labour has said.
John Fuller made the remarks on Newsnight last night, suggesting that the government payment encourages people to catch and spread coronavirus and it should not be in place.
The Tory councillor, who is leader of South Norfolk Council, was asked if there was "something wrong" with the scheme, as up to 70 per cent of claims have been rejected.
He said: "Not everybody's entitled to the payment if they've got savings or they can work from home anyway...Let's not have a system whereby if you catch Covid you get £500.
"That's an incentive to actually spread the disease and that's not in anybody's interest."
When questioned on the comments, he said: "What I'm saying is let's not have the incentive... I didn't say it was, let's not have an incentive that would encourage people to catch the disease.
"Our job is to bear down on it as quickly as we can.
"When test and trace falls away local councils are better, cheaper and faster, more effective at bearing down on this at street level, at the family level.
"95% of the cases that national test and trace finds too difficult are now solved in our county, that's the best way to beat this disease."
“[We shouldn’t] have a system whereby if you catch Covid you get £500.”
— BBC Newsnight (@BBCNewsnight) April 1, 2021
- Conservative leader of South Norfolk Council @JohnFullerOBE on whether the government should increase accessibility to the self-isolation payment scheme https://t.co/vY2Su56cFR#Newsnight pic.twitter.com/mQ5ur9lxe3
Angela Rayner MP, Labour’s Deputy Leader, said the Conservatives should "distance" themselves from the remarks.
She said: "That a senior Conservative would suggest people are deliberately catching Covid in order to get sick pay is as disgraceful as it is absurd, especially as the Conservatives have excluded so many people from the support they need to do the right thing and isolate over the last year.
“These claims have no basis in reality and are a grim insult to anyone who has lost a loved one to this terrible virus.
“Amanda Milling and the Conservatives must apologies and distance themselves from them immediately.”
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