Rishi Sunak splashed millions of pounds worth of taxpayer cash on focus groups to craft the messaging behind his planned “eat out to help out” campaign in July 2020, reports in the Guardian show.
Five public opinion contracts worth more than £2 million were negotiated by The Treasury from June 2020 throughout the pandemic, while Sunak was chancellor, helping inform him how best to “sell” the hospitality scheme to voters.
Almost six weeks’ worth of internal emails, released this week, show that the consequences on wider public health were largely an afterthought, with the sole focus going on the popularity of the £850 million policy.
Indeed, even the UK’s top medical and scientific advisers were kept in the dark about the scheme, which is ‘highly likely’ to have increased Covid deaths, according to former chief adviser Patrick Vallance.
The documents obtained by The Guardian reveal that polling for the Treasury in June 2020 found that only 13 per cent agreed the government should create incentives for people to spend on eating out so they could start to return to normal life, while 39 per cent thought it should not be a priority.
In response, the Treasury’s director of communications, Olaf Henricson-Bell, asked colleagues: “Can we test if people are more supportive of the hospitality stuff if it’s framed as about jobs?”
Cass Horowitz, a special adviser who now works for Sunak in No 10, said: “If it helps, Allegra [Stratton, director of strategic communications at the Treasury from April until October 2020] has a nice phrase on this. ‘Eat out, help out’ frames it as supporting the sector/jobs rather than just having a nice time.”
They also reveal that it was only on the day after the announcement of the scheme, on 8 July 2020, that a Treasury official suggested asking the public if they were concerned about its health impact.
An unnamed civil servant emailed Sunak’s team to say: “We should test what people think about health risks of encouraging people to restaurants with EOtHO, eg which of these statements most closely reflects your view?
“(1) it’s irresponsible for the government to encourage people to go out to restaurants and risk increasing the spread of coronavirus or (2) too many people’s jobs are at risk – the government is right to encourage people to go out safely.”
On the eve of its launch three weeks later, an unnamed aide suggested polling to ask whether people felt it was “irresponsible” for the government to encourage people to go out to restaurants or if, after months of lockdown and with people’s jobs at risk, it was right to do so.
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