A sub-group of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies has said ethnic minority communities were being stigmatised and added: “This situation could be exploited by far and extreme right-wing groups”, our home affairs correspondent Lizzie Dearden reports.
The document was published on Friday but had been considered at a high-level meeting hours before tightened restrictions were announced for swathes of northern England on 30 July.
Matt Hancock announced the “northern lockdown” on the eve of the Islamic festival of Eid, sparking a frenzy on far-right social media networks as extremists blamed Muslims for spreading coronavirus.
“Given the current epidemiological trend of transmission concentrations within BAME communities, there is the risk of racial stigmatisation and discrimination,” said the statement by Sage’s SPI-B sub-group on local interventions, warning of “racial tensions and risks to social cohesion”.
