How did government officials publish ‘Covid variant guidance’ without the PM knowing?

Last Friday, Boris Johnson insisted that the Government was still on track to lift social distancing rules on June 21, despite fears over the Indian variant.

“I am still seeing nothing in the data that leads me to think that we’re going to have to deviate from the road map”, the Prime Minister told reporters.

Behind the scenes, however, Mr Johnson’s officials were apparently not quite as hopeful. On that same day last week, the Government’s website was quietly updated with new “guidance for areas where the new Covid variant is spreading”.

In eight areas of the country including Bedford, Bolton and Leicester, people were told not to go on holiday or leave their area without good reason.

It was a major shift that effectively plunged more than 1.7 million people back into lockdown at a stroke. But no announcement was made, local authorities were apparently not informed, and it took nearly four days for anyone to notice.

Ministers scrambled on Monday to contain a growing revolt among MPs and public health officials who complained that their areas had been placed in “lockdown by stealth”.

At the end of a chaotic day of negotiations, public health officials joined forces to announce there would be “no local lockdowns”, effectively telling their residents to ignore the new national advice.

Downing Street later gave ground, announcing that that the guidance would be updated again “to make it clearer we are not imposing local restrictions”.

The prime minister’s official spokesman said ministers were keen to encourage the public “to exercise their good judgement”, rather than issue “top-down edicts”.

The new guidance was first noticed on Monday afternoon by Ian Brown, a former television editor from Bolton, who called his local BBC newsroom.

“I thought, no one’s talking about this so I must be wrong”, Mr Brown said.

Puzzled reporters at the Manchester Evening News had also spotted the new rules. “We all had to take a step back. Was this something we already knew about, but that all of us had collectively forgotten?” one reporter wrote.

“But no. A few messages to local sources quickly showed this was news to them too.”

Public health officials in the eight affected areas lined up to say they had received no communication from the Government.

Indeed, North Tyneside’s director of public health had unwittingly told a local newspaper on Monday that it was “certainly okay to visit the area”, adding: “We’ve got some fantastic things for people to come and see”.

Dominic Harrison, the director of public health for Blackburn with Darwen council, said he was “astonished” that they had not been informed, while local authority sources pointed out that NHS chief executive Simon Stevens travelled to Bolton on Friday to visit a vaccination site.

Amid a growing row, the prime minister’s official spokesperson claimed No 10 had shared “marketing assets” – posters and social media posts – with local authorities to help them spread the word about the policy.

But at a press conference, Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham said the updated Government guidance was a “fairly major communications error” which had caused “huge amounts of confusion”.

“Nobody in our system was told about this change in the presentation of the guidance,” he said.

“There will be concern this is a local lockdown by stealth.”

Later, after a meeting with government officials including Dr Jenny Harries, chief executive of the UK Health Security Agency, Leicester’s director of public health claimed the Government had admitted the new advice was “incorrect”.

“There are no local lockdowns and there is no justification for Leicester to be treated differently from the rest of the country,” Professor Ivan Browne said, adding that people should continue to follow existing national guidelines as before.

At first, Downing Street sources insisted the guidance would stay, but later in the evening released a statement confirming that the wording would be “updated”.

On Monday night a Whitehall blame game began, with sources pointing the finger at the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), alleging it was Matt Hancock’s department that was responsible for updating local health chiefs, which it had failed to do.

They claimed that the oversight occurred in part because the process for issuing guidance, which is optional for the public to follow, has been subject to less stringent Whitehall approval procedures than those for restrictions, which are legally binding.

The latter have followed a formal process, which has involved input from the Joint Biosecurity Centre (JBC) and the “Covid O” operations committee, with a call then made by Boris Johnson and put to the Cabinet for sign off.

However, while the JBC is currently involved in identifying areas that need more targeted support to tackle the Indian variant, the tougher guidance may have been issued without due consideration of the seriousness of introducing stricter advice for specific areas, or the need for a thought-out communications plan.

Regarding the failure to inform local health authorities or councils, the source said: “I think it was a case of someone assuming that someone else was doing that bit, it fell through the gaps.”

They added: “There’s no hidden agenda”.

A claim that DHSC had updated the guidance without sign-off from No 10 was strongly denied by multiple Government sources. One said: “That is a lie”.

While government sources were keen to present the fiasco as just a communications cock-up, it may lead to speculation that the farce in fact offered a glimpse of tensions behind the scenes.

There are long running divisions between parts of Whitehall which advocate for tougher restrictions and Number 10, which is keen to press ahead with a return to normality.

There have been reports that Michael Gove and the Cabinet Office and Mr Hancock and the Department for Health have been lobbying behind closed doors for the Prime Minister to take tougher action against the Indian variant, with him resisting any re-imposition of local lockdowns. Chris Green, Tory MP for Bolton West, was incredulous at the idea that the Government could slip out fresh guidance but simply forget to inform local leaders.

“To comprehensively, accidentally forget to brief all these people - local health leaders and council leaders - is a bit unbelievable”, he said.

A government spokesman said: “We will be updating the guidance for areas where the new Covid variant is spreading to make it clearer we are not imposing local restrictions. Instead, we are providing advice on the additional precautions people can take to protect themselves and others in those areas where the new variant is prevalent.

“This includes, wherever possible, trying to meet outdoors rather than indoors, keeping 2 metres apart from anyone you don’t live with and minimising travel in and out the area. These are not new regulations but they are some of the ways everyone can help bring the variant under control in their local area.”

• Do you live in one of the eight areas affected by the new guidance? We want to hear from you. Share your thoughts on how the new guidance was issued and how it has affected you in the comments section below or email yourstory@telegraph.co.uk