We won’t have to go sup in smoke Mask manufacture ramps up

Outdoor non-smoking areas

would abandon a nuclear deterrent. But it is like a nuclear deterrent, I certainly don’t want to use it – and nor do I think we will be in that position again.

“It’s not just that we’re getting much better at spotting the disease and isolating it locally, but we understand far more which groups it affects, how it works, how it’s transmitted – so the possibility of different types of segmentation, of enhanced shielding for particular groups, is now there.”

Mr Johnson admitted he was “not betting” on a vaccine, saying: “We haven’t got one for Sars and it has been 18 years.”

The PM’S belief he can avoid another national lockdown once again puts him at odds with the Chief Scientific

Adviser Sir

Patrick Vallance, who said last week: “Come winter, the challenges will be very much greater... this could also need national measures as well.” Mr Johnson’s dismissal of a second lockdown comes amid warnings from a senior civil servant over the effectiveness of the test and trace system.

Alex Cooper, the “senior responsible owner” for two of the five pillars of the Government’s testing programme, said in an industry briefing: “We are identifying around a third of the people we really should be finding. “We need to be finding roughly half of the people that have Covid... if test and trace is going to work.”

The first face-to-face Cabinet meeting for nearly four months is to be held tomorrow. The PM’S top team will be two metres apart and allowed to wear masks when they meet in the Foreign Office’s Locarno Suite.

The usual table at No10 is too small to seat them all with social distancing.

No10, which has been calling for workers to return to their offices, hopes the symbolic move will encourage ordinary people to go back to work.

But Keir Starmer accused the PM of putting parents in an “impossible position” by urging a return to offices over the summer while failing to provide adequate support for childcare, holiday activities or catch-up schemes.

The Labour leader said: “We all want society to get moving again, but it requires a clear plan and national leadership from the Government. Despite ordering millions of parents back to the office, the Prime Minister has refused to provide any extra help for families.”

Manufacturers today stepped up calls for the furlough scheme to be extended by six months for some industries.

Business group Makeuk said a survey of 170 firms suggested that 53% were planning job cuts in the next six months.

Chief executive Stephen Phipson said: “There is no disguising the fact these redundancy plans make for very painful reading.

“As well as the distressing personal impact on livelihoods across the UK, industry cannot afford to lose these high-value skills which will be essential to rebuilding our economy.”

CHIEF EXECUTIVE OF MAKEUK

AT ODDS PM and Starmer