SO, DOES ANYONE KNOW THEIR Rs FROM THEIR ELBOW?
BORIS AND KEIR CLASH IN COMMONS OVER BEST WAY TO TACKLE BRITAIN’S SOARING REPRO RATE
BORIS JOHNSON refused to rule out a second nationwide lockdown yesterday – as Sir Keir Starmer accused him of ‘abandoning the science’.
The prime minister, who headed to the Commons with his shirt wrongly buttoned, said his regional measures were the ‘right approach’ to contain Covid-19.
But Sir Keir declared as he clashed with Mr Johnson at PMQs: ‘I can’t think of a single scientist who backs him.’
The Labour leader repeated his demand for a two- to three-week ‘circuit break’ to bring the ‘R-rate’ – how many others each infected person typically passes the virus to – below one.
Mr Johnson responded: ‘We want the strongest measures necessary in the areas where the virus is surging.
‘Those measures would deliver the reduction in the R locally to avert the disaster of a national lockdown.
‘I rule out nothing, of course, in combating the virus, but we are going to do it with the local approach.’
The exchange came after scientists from the government’s Sage advisory committee said that a two-week national lockdown could prevent 7,800 deaths.
They also said the PM’s strategy of dividing the country into three tiers of restrictions was ‘the worst of all worlds’.
‘If we wait, the government will inevitably have to change course again in four to six weeks, but the longer they leave it the harsher restrictions will have to get and the longer they will need to be imposed,’ warned Sir Jeremy Farrar warned.
Fellow adviser Graham Medley said it may be too late to implement a circuit break in the October half-term, but December was an option.
A YouGov poll shows 68 per cent of people back bringing in such a measure, with 20 per cent opposed and the rest of the country unsure. But chancellor Rishi Sunak said Labour should ‘have the integrity to acknowledge that what they are proposing will create significant damage to people’s lives and livelihoods’.
Meanwhile, Prof David Nabarro, of the World Health Organization, has warned countries to ‘stop using lockdown as your primary control method’. He told The Spectator magazine: ‘Lockdowns just have one consequence that you must never ever belittle, and that is making poor people an awful lot poorer.’
Mayor of Manchester Andy Burnham threatened to take the government to court if ministers decide today that the city should follow Liverpool into tier three. ‘We would consider legal routes, where we could protect our many thousands of residents who are going to be left in severe hardship in the run-up to Christmas,’ he said.
At a joint press conference with Mr Burnham, Liverpool’s metro mayor Steve Rotheram accused the government of trying to do ‘lockdown on the cheap in the north’. He said Mr Sunak’s scheme to help affected firms and their staff ‘is inadequate and risks putting tens of thousands of low-paid workers significantly below the national minimum wage’.