Write to your MP

Zero Covid have made a quick tool that you can use to send a template letter.

Here is the text of the template letter:

I am writing to urge you to fight to maintain the absolutely crucial self-isolation legislation. The self-isolation regulations must not be allowed to expire, this month or the next, or for as long as we have community transmission of Covid-19. Polling shows that only a small minority of the public agree with the plans.

Ending this legislation will put me and all of your constituents at increased risk of sickness, lost income, long Covid, or potentially even death. This is especially true for clinically vulnerable people, who have been completely abandoned while shielding throughout the pandemic. Despite Boris Johnson’s declarations otherwise, the trends in the data remain dire. Tens of thousands of UK residents test positive for Covid and hundreds of people are dying every day.

The legislation also included a duty on employers not to allow workers to come into the workplace when they are supposed to be self-isolating. Removing this measure will likely lead to your constituents, and people across the UK, being made to work while they have the virus, endangering themselves, their colleagues and members of the public.

We know that the support currently available for self-isolation is inadequate. The TUC found in mid-December that more than 250,000 workers were self-isolating without adequate sick pay, or any sick pay at all. Instead of seeking to undermine self-isolation, the correct policy is to provide real practical and financial support to those required to self-isolate. This is especially important in the context of the cost-of-living crisis. That is why I am also asking you to sign EDM 954 ‘Statutory Sick Pay and a living wage’.

The right way forward is to commit to a ‘vaccines-plus’ strategy, including by continuing to provide free tests, and through mask mandates, investment in ventilation, rebuilding the test and trace system (and handing it back to the public sector), implementing safety measures in schools and workplaces and ending vaccine apartheid through a patent waiver, vaccine-sharing and technology transfers.

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