Speaking this morning, the Health Secretary insisted they were still following the guidelines and could have continued trading through the pandemic.
The senior Minister today welcomed companies such as B&Q, house builders Taylor Wimpey and car makers Jaguar and Nissan getting back to work.
Appearing on Sky News, he said: “The things that are restarting are things that we never required to close in the first place, but what the companies have been doing is working out how they can have safe working following the social distancing rules whilst people are at work.
“Throughout we’ve allowed hardware stores to stay open, and the construction industry, but what businesses have been doing is taking the last couple of weeks to work out ‘ok how do you stay open and stay within the social-distancing rules at work?’
“So it’s absolutely fine for those businesses to stay open because they were never required to close by the social-distancing rules.”
In the same interview, the Tory MP insisted Britain could not yet ease restrictions despite the number of deaths falling.
Mr Hancock urged the nation to keep following the guidelines and not let up just because some shops were re-opening.
He said: “The truth is, it’s still too soon, safely, to change those measures.
“Although the number of people who died yesterday was lower, it was still over 600, so it’s still too high.
“I just urge people to continue sticking to those rules, because it’s working and we’re flattening that curve but we need to see it coming down.”
It comes less than 24 hours after Mr Hancock made a desperate public plea for Brits to sign up to a “vital” coronarvirus antibodies study.
Up to 300,000 people will be offered home-testing kits to help track the spread of the outbreak which has so far killed 18,738 people in the UK.
Officials will contact 20,000 households in England to take part in a pioneering year-long study.
