No end in sight to fans being allowed back in despite Culture Secretary admitting decision is 'positively hateful'

Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden has warned that it could be some time before fans are allowed back into football matches once more, despite labelling the decision to keep supporters away from stadiums due to Covid-19 as 'positively hateful'.

It had been proposed to allow a small section of fans to return from October 1, although these were postponed because of a rise in infections.

A growing frustration among football clubs, players, pundits and supporters on social media, saw a petition launched which received over 190,000 signatures and will now be debated by MPs on November 9.

With cases still steadily rising every day then crowds may not be allowed back until the end of March at the earliest, as speaking to MPs at a Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee today, Dowden said: "The very clear advice was that at this stage of the disease, we should be imposing restrictions.

"We are doing things that are positively hateful, but the reason we are doing it is to secure public safety.

“I desperately wanted socially distanced fans in stadiums from the start of October but we had to pause that because of the rapidly rising rates of infection.

“It's not just the stadium, it is the journey to and from the stadium both on public transport and people being likely to want something to eat or drink on the way.

“When we get to the point that we have confidence we have the disease under control so that it is not on a rapid upward curve I would rapidly return to this decision.”

After photographs emerged of a show at the London Palladium, where former Arsenal boss Arsene Wenger was holding an event, led to questions about why crowds cannot return to sport in outdoor stadiums, particularly with shopping centres and bars open too, Dowden continued: "If we had socially distancing for sport that is a lot of people coming week in and week out going to sports stadiums up and down the country.

"There are actually very few socially distanced indoor performances going on. They are not massively financially viable.

"If people are unhappy with indoor performances going ahead with social distancing that is a separate question of whether you stop them, as it were.

"It is worth noting it is not just in the stadium – it’s the journey to the stadium both on issues such as public transport, (and) people are likely to want something to eat or drink on the way, there is lots of other social contact.

“That’s not to say those things can’t be mitigated, they can be.

"But we have to accept that in permitting that to go ahead from October 1 we would have been having an easing in restriction, an increase in social interaction, which could have aided the spread of the disease at the same time as we were imposing lots of further restrictions.”

Meanwhile, when asked what would be needed for fans to be allowed back in again, Dowden added: "One is a vaccine, and once we get to the point where that is sufficiently spread through the national community.

"The second is in relation to on-day testing, both the level of it and the confidence in it, and clearly there will be other priorities for that but we are confident of allocating that for the performing arts.

"The third thing is the natural progression of the disease and the measures we’re taking to control it.”