BORIS Johnson has claimed that working from home doesn’t work as he encouraged the British public to return to offices to “drive up productivity”.
In an interview with the Daily Mail, the Prime Minister insisted that he was not “antediluvian” on the benefits of remote working technology like Zoom.
However, he claimed that it wasn’t an effective long-term solution as he gave some insight into his own personal experience.
He said: “My experience of working from home is you spend an awful lot of time making another cup of coffee and then, you know, getting up, walking very slowly to the fridge, hacking off a small piece of cheese, then walking very slowly back to your laptop and then forgetting what it was you’re doing.
“So, I believe in the workplace environment. And I think that will help to drive up productivity, it will get our city centres moving, in the weekdays. And it will be good for mass transit. And a lot of businesses that have been having a tough time will benefit from that.”
The Prime Minister recently referred to a “post-Covid manana culture” after he criticised “expensive delays” in delivering passports and driving licences to people during the Queen’s Speech debate.
Johnson told MPs: “When times are tough and families are facing such pressures, we must also cut the cost of government and cut the burdens that government places on taxpayers and on citizens.
“We can’t have expensive delays in delivering passports and driving licences that see families stranded and unable to go on holiday, HGV drivers unable to transport goods around this country in the way that is so integral to the economy, we need and we’re going to fix it.”
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Johnson’s colleague on the Tory frontbench, Jacob Rees-Mogg, also commented on working from home in an interview with Sky News. He said he accepted “there is a place for working from home” but said public services had at times been negatively impacted by remote working.
The Brexit Opportunities minister said: “There is a place for working from home, there is a place for hybrid working, but we’ve seen in the passport office and the DVLA… the public services to some people have not been delivered because of working from home.”
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