Labour leader backs regional mayor's call for 10pm curfew review

Sir Keir said: “We are supporting the package the Government has put in. But I think Andy Burnham in particular has questioned whether the 10pm curfew is working as intended.

“He has pointed, understandably, to lots of people coming out of venues at the same time.

“I suggest it might be a good idea for the Government to reflect on what Andy Burnham is saying and ask themselves the question whether that should stay in place.”

“We have supported these restrictions, but we have now got – after this morning’s announcement – over 50 areas in local restrictions and over the weeks and months only one area has come out of these restrictions,” he said.

“So we need a strategy, a road map, people need to have hope that this is going to work.”

He told reporters at Westminster that the Government needed to “massively improve” the way it communicated and provide economic support for areas at the same time restrictions were imposed.

“I think we need a rapid review of the local lockdowns because what we are seeing is that in some areas in lockdown the infection rates are going up, not down.

“That’s worrying and there needs to be a review into that. In other areas they have been in local lockdown for months and so there needs to be a rapid review – what’s working, what isn’t working, what does the science tell us about that.”L

Responding to Jeremy Corbyn’s apparent breach of the ‘rule of six’, his successor as Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said: “All of us should obey the rules, Jeremy knows that, I know that, all of us have to comply with the rules.

“I have said throughout that whatever the Government rules are, we should all follow them. We have got a duty to so.”

Asked whether Mr Corbyn should be fined, he told reporters at Westminster: “It’s not for me to decide who should be fined, but it is for me to say that everybody should follow the rules.”

There have been a further 398 cases of Covid-19 in Wales, bringing the total number of confirmed cases in the country to 24,383.

Public Health Wales said six further deaths had been reported, with the total number of deaths since the beginning of the pandemic increasing to 1,622.

A further 44 people who tested positive for coronavirus have died in hospital in England, bringing the total number of confirmed deaths reported in hospitals to 30,049, NHS England said on Thursday.

Patients were aged between 60 and 99 years old and all had known underlying health conditions.

The deaths were between September 18 and September 30.

Five other deaths were reported with no positive Covid-19 test result.