People should work from home if it is possible them to do so, a government minister said. 

Cabinet Office minister Michael Gove told Sky News this morning there was going to be a "shift in emphasis" on the government's advice about working from home.

He said: "If it is possible for people to work from home then we would encourage them to do so."

It appears to be a u-turn on last month, when the government urged people to head back to the office. 

Transport secretary Grant Shapps said on August 28: “By and large, where it is possible, people can now return to work."

He told BBC Breakfast: “It is safe to do so, your employer should have put in Covid-friendly – or Covid-unfriendly I suppose you could say – measures to ensure that people can work safely from their offices – because there are just things which are impossible to do from home over Zoom videos as we’re doing now." 

Three weeks on - and with covid cases climbing across the country - Mr Gove gave an alternative view to the same programme. "If people can work from home, they should," he told BBC Breakfast.

"But I stress that it's very important that those people whose jobs require them to be in a specific workplace do so."

He added that it was not a case of "revisiting the days at the beginning of our response to this virus" as "workplaces are safer", adding: "But one of the risks that we have to face is that social mixing overall contributes to the spread of the virus.

"So as much as we can restrain that as possible at this stage, the better for all of us and for public health."