Hospitality businesses “among the last” to reopen post-lockdown: cabinet official

Pubs, bars, cafés and restaurants across the UK closed on 20 March.

Hospitality businesses “will be among the last to exit the lockdown”, minister for the cabinet office Michael Gove has said in an interview on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show.

Gove, chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, made no comment on whether hospitality venues could reopen before the winter, but said the government was taking a “deliberately cautious and measured approach, guided by the science.”

“When we have the data that allows us confidently to relax those restrictions, we will do so, however that data, that information, is not yet in place,” he added.

The UK is to remain in lockdown for at least a further three weeks after foreign secretary Dominic Raab announced an extension to the existing limits on daily life earlier this week.