Coronavirus: Liverpool mayor expects strictest ‘tier three‘ lockdown within days

Joe Anderson says city will be among places where people are banned from mixing, and pubs and restaurants are shut

Liverpool is to be placed into a stricter coronavirus lockdown within days, the city’s mayor has said, as part of a planned England-wide tier system expected to be introduced by Boris Johnson. 

It will be among the first swathe of places – also thought to include the North East and Nottinghamshire – to have the tightest restrictions imposed, Joe Anderson added.

Pubs, restaurants and leisure facilities are expected to be closed as part of the measures, designed to stem the rising surge of Covid-19 cases.

Residents will be banned form mixing with other households in any setting, it is understood.

Johnson is set to unveil the new measures in an address on Monday, but Anderson pre-empted the detail in an interview on BBC Radio 4 on Saturday morning.

“We had some conversations with Downing Street yesterday, we have got further conversations, discussions with them this afternoon, and I expect that Liverpool will be one of those announced,” he said.

“We will be in the local lockdown, new local lockdown, which is announced, which will probably be tier three, and that will be enacted in Parliament on Tuesday.”

Riffing on a much-made complaint of local leaders this week, the directly elected Labour mayor added that those conversations had not been treated by Westminster as a consultation.

“The main point of the imposition of the measures are clearly that: imposition,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. “We have not be consulted."

A procession of northern politicians and leaders have this week slammed the government’s leaked decision to close pubs and restaurants in their areas without any consultation.

An announcement on Friday by chancellor rishi Sunak that effected workers would receive two-thirds of their wage paid by the state as done little to dampen that criticism.

In a joint statement, the mayors of Greater Manchester, the Sheffield and Liverpool city regions and North Tyne said: “What has been announced by the chancellor today is a start but, on first look, it would not appear to have gone far enough to prevent genuine hardship, job losses and business failure this winter. Mayors and leaders from across the north will be meeting tomorrow to discuss it in more detail and we will make a further statement then.