ANDY Burnham has hit out at government ministers who implied that the row over Greater Manchester's restrictions cost lives.

Ministers discussing the new coronavirus restrictions confirmed that no negotiations would be made with local authorities – citing the battle with local leaders in the area as one of the reasons for that change.

Matt Hancock told MPs that the delay over moving it into Tier 3 restrictions had been “bad for public health” and vowed not to let it happen again under the new system coming in next month.

During a joint session in front of the Health and Social Care Committee and Science and Technology Committee earlier today, Mr Hancock said: “The reason we are doing it differently is, whilst in most cases when we negotiated with most areas in the previous tiered arrangement, we had a high quality discussion which led to better outcomes.

“A case in point is Liverpool, where the case rate has fallen by over two thirds in the last three weeks.

“Unfortunately that wasn’t the case in all local areas.”

When asked whether he was referring to Greater Manchester, Mr Hancock added: “That would be one example but not the only one.

“Sadly, in the case of Greater Manchester, cases carried on going up whilst we were trying to put in place the measures that were necessary.

“So, instead, we’ve proposed a set of measures within the tiers which are fixed, also financial support which is agreed by formula rather than negotiation.

Transport Secretary Grant Shapps appeared on Sky News this morning to discuss the change.

He said: "Rather than getting into individual negotiations with different areas which I'm afraid rather delayed the start of some of the tiering last time.

"I'm afraid that in itself was one of the reasons that led to perhaps not getting on top of the virus as quickly as possible, instead we will have a regionalised but national approach."

Later in the interview, he implied that Mr Burnham's fight back against the restrictions was harmful to the region, and the mayor should have tried to fight for the interests of the region by agreeing to the measures, potentially saving lives – adding "the most important thing if you're standing up for your region is to save people's lives".

Mr Burnham later appeared on the same show. He said: "if you go back to those negotiations with the government, we were left waiting over a whole weekend, myself and the ten leaders of Greater Manchester, while the government walked away.

"we wouldn't have been in that position had the government listened to SAGE back in September and brought forward the national circuit break much earlier.

"I don't know why they think imposing tiers on the whole of the country is an appropriate response just because they had a row with me – it doesn't sound like a very grown-up government."