Boris Johnson warns wfh Britons they risk being ‘gossiped about’

Boris Johnson today warned Britons working from home that they risk being ‘gossiped about’ and missing out on ‘stimulus and competition’ unless they return to the office. 

The PM voiced growing confidence that Covid will not spark further lockdowns as he urged people to get ‘back to work in the normal way’.

He said the government was always ‘humble in the face of nature’ and recognised that ‘a new variant or another pandemic could always hit us’.

But he insisted: ‘The data that I see at the moment is very clear that we are right to stick to Plan A, which is what we are on.’

He said getting back to offices was ‘essential for young people in particular’. 

‘If you are going to learn on the job, you can’t just do it on Zoom,’ he told LBC radio.

‘You have got to be able to come in, you have got to know what everyone else is talking about – otherwise you are going to be gossiped about and you are going to lose out.’  

Mr Johnson admitted that ‘100 per cent’ of his own staff are not yet back in the office. 

But he added: ‘The Cabinet Secretary has written a pretty good letter some weeks ago to everybody telling them to get back to their desks.’

In other developments at the Tory conference:

Mr Johnson denied supply chain chaos is a ‘crisis’ as he said the economy is ‘creaking’ back into life after Covid and moving to ‘higher wages’; The number of offenders forced to wear electronic tags will double under a major initiative from Mr Raab;Rishi Sunak ruled out tax cuts until public finances were on a ‘sustainable footing’;Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries questioned whether the BBC would still exist in ten years’ time;Mr Johnson pledged that electricity will come entirely from green sources by 2035;Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng rejected calls for more visas for foreign workers;Pig farmers warned of ‘disaster’ as they protested outside the conference over a shortage of butchers;A party member was suspended after a businesswoman said she had been ‘violently assaulted’ in a bar;Sir Iain Duncan Smith was hit on the head with a traffic cone by Left-wing protesters chanting ‘Tory scum’;Michael Gove signalled a huge shift on planning policy.

Mr Johnson launched an ill-fated attempt to get office staff back to their desks last year, which was wrecked by the emergence of the second wave of Covid.

Scientific advisers have pressed him not to repeat the exercise this year because working from home is one of the most effective ways of slowing the spread of the virus.

Instead the Government left it up to employers to encourage a ‘gradual return to the workplace’. 

Mr Johnson is expected to issue a rallying cry for people to return to workplaces in his conference speech tomorrow.

‘He believes very strongly in the value of face-to-face working,’ a senior source told the Mail. ‘It is critical for the training and development of young people. How can you learn a new job on Zoom?’ 

A second Tory source said ministers were now hopeful they would not have to issue another work from home order this winter.

‘You can never rule anything out with Covid,’ the source said. ‘But we are now in early October and hospitalisations are still running at manageable levels.

‘We are not at the point of anyone thinking about Plan B.

‘Even if we get to that point, it would start with things that cause relatively little disruption, such as mandatory masks and Covid certification.’

Powers to reinstate the work from home order have been kept in reserve in the Government’s contingency plans for Covid this winter.

But ministers believe that Britain’s wall of vaccination is holding up well against the virus.

While cases remain high, with 35,077 new infections recorded yesterday, hospital admissions remain relatively low. Admissions are averaging just over 700 per day and falling – far below the predictions by government modellers, who said admissions would rise to between 2,000 and 7,000 a day this month.

Tory demands to get more people back to the office have intensified since all legal Covid restrictions were lifted in July.

Former cabinet minister Jake Berry yesterday demanded that the Government set an example by ordering middle class civil servants back to Whitehall, joking that many were ‘woke-ing from home’.

Mr Berry told a fringe event: ‘We have to end the Civil Service ‘woke-ing’ from home – sorry, I mean working from home, but, let’s be honest, it often is woke-ing.’ Official ‘work from home’ Whitehall guidance was removed on July 19 and the Government told businesses they expected ‘a gradual return over the summer’.

However, insiders said Whitehall had only seen a slight increase in staff back at their desks, with numbers still ‘pretty low’.

Whitehall sources said that almost half of officials at the department for education are now back at their desks. But at the Home Office the figure is closer to 20 per cent, while for some departments, including the Ministry of Housing it is barely half that.

In September, job adverts for roles at HM Treasury revealed that staff would be allowed to work from home in a hybrid pattern on a permanent basis, spending an average of two to three days a week in the office.

Asked about Mr Berry’s comments, Boris Johnson’s official spokesman defended the Civil Service but emphasised the importance of ‘working in person’.

He said: ‘The position of the Government remains that we want to see a steady return of the public to working in person, and that’s the expectation of the Civil Service, that’s what we’ve seen throughout the summer.’

He said civil servants ‘have been able to deliver for the public whilst working from home’, but added: ‘That said, as the Prime Minister has said repeatedly, there are significant benefits to being in work, to office working, and those should not be discounted. That’s why we are encouraging all employers to start steadily bringing in their workforce, as we are at this stage of the epidemic.’