Cabinet data gap backlash gap backlash

Ministers split over new curbs and demand more information on Omicron amid row over modelling

MINISTERS, MPs and health experts demanded better data on the impact of Omicron last night amid a row over the modelling used to push the case for new Covid curbs.

At an emergency Cabinet meeting lasting more than two hours, Rishi Sunak, Liz Truss and Grant Shapps were among several ministers who are said to have called for more precise information on the likely impact of the variant.

Jacob Rees-Mogg, Alister Jack and Nigel Adams were also said to have opposed any reintroduction of punitive curbs without clearer evidence of Omicron’s severity.

A growing number of experts pushed back at the ‘pessimistic’ modelling and ‘implausible’ predictions of thousands of deaths and soaring hospital admissions.

Their opposition followed a growing row over forecasts presented to the Cabinet by the Government’s Sage scientific advisers on Saturday, which claimed that Covid deaths could reach 6,000 a day without more restrictions soon. Details of the modelling were leaked to the BBC.

Several experts and MPs publicly questioned the assumptions behind it, suggesting that Sage scientists needed to show their working before it could be used to justify new restrictions.

They pointed out that – amid growing evidence that Omicron causes ‘milder’ illness – there was still huge uncertainty over what proportion of cases end up in hospital and how effective vaccines are at preventing infection, serious illness and death.

Professor Carl Heneghan, director of evidence-based medicine at Oxford University, condemned the apparent obsession with ‘worst case scenarios’ and said the country was in a ‘very different place’ to last year because of vaccines.

Mark Harper, chairman of the Tory backbench Covid Recovery Group, said: ‘These are big decisions affecting everyone’s lives, people’s livelihoods and mental wellbeing across the country. We all deserve to see the data ministers see. Show us your workings. We can do so much better than this.’

Ministers have cited evidence that hospitalisations have risen in London in the last two weeks, with the capital having more Omicron infections than anywhere else in the UK.

But Cambridge University professor David Spiegelhalter suggested this may simply be a reflection of the transmissibility of the variant rather than its severity.

At yesterday’s virtual Cabinet meeting, several ministers were said to have made clear they were unwilling to bring in restrictions until they had better data.

However, Levelling Up Secretary Michael Gove was one of those arguing in favour of tough action. He was backed by Health Secretary Sajid Javid.

Ministers are waiting for updated modelling from Imperial College London, expected tomorrow, before any further decisions.

Last night, former Cabinet minister Esther McVey praised Boris Johnson for holding off from toughening restrictions. She tweeted she was pleased the Cabinet and PM ‘are now listening to their backbench MPs and for once pushed back on the scaremongering by the lockdown fanatics’.

Labour, meanwhile, were in a muddle, unable to say which further curbs they would support. Asked on Good Morning Britain what restrictions Labour would specifically introduce, Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves replied: ‘That’s not the job of the Opposition. We don’t have the information.’ She then said the party would follow Sage advice, adding: ‘At the moment Sage aren’t calling for any specific measures but they are saying that more action is needed.’

Referring to a meeting of the Cobra emergency committee convened over the weekend at which decisions were taken on increasing funding to tackle Omicron, Miss Reeves said: ‘If I was in govcase ernment, I would have been at those Covid meetings yesterday to get all of that evidence and make a decision. The Prime Minister and the Chancellor didn’t even turn up. They are not interested in hearing the advice.

‘If we were in government, we would be at those meetings and put in place the measures.’

Figures from South Africa, where Omicron was first identified, suggest it is far less deadly than the previous dominant variant, Delta. Dr Pieter Streicher, from the University of Johannesburg, said the fatality rate – the number who test positive and then die –has fallen by a factor of 19 – from 3 per cent to 0.16 per cent, meaning only 16 deaths in every 1,000 infected.

He added that cases are coming down ‘rapidly’ in Gauteng, the province which was the epicentre of the Omicron outbreak, with hospital and intensive care bed numbers peaking.

Professor Heneghan warned that overly pessimistic modelling meant Britain was in danger of imposing yearly lockdowns.

He said the rollout of vaccines, booster jabs and antivirals had cut the risk of hospitalisation and death, which is ‘as good as it gets’, and people should be trusted to make their own decisions about the risks they want to take.

Professor Graham Medley, who chairs the modelling group that feeds into Sage, suggested that the committee does not consider optimistic scenarios because ‘that doesn’t get decisions made’.

Professor Keith Willison, a chemical biologist at Imperial, criticised the models as ‘widely pessimistic’, adding they were being used to ‘frighten the UK population into submission and further lockdown’.

‘Show us your working’

‘Modelling widely pessimistic’