MP’s GUILTY PLEASURE
TORY CAUGHT READING METRO’S STORY ON VACCINES DURING COMMONS DEBATE THAT SEALED LOCKDOWN
BORIS JOHNSON urged MPs to read Metro to keep up with the latest on the Covid crisis as he plunged Britain back into lockdown last night.
MPs demanded answers in the Commons as the prime minister claimed the NHS could ‘collapse’ without the month-long closure of pubs, restaurants and non-essential shops.
The debate was interrupted when speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle spotted Tory MP Andrew Murrison reading Metro and told him to put it down.
But the PM intervened and told the speaker: ‘It is absolutely right for members to consult relevant documents that may contain information to the advantage and betterment of the House.’ Mr Murrison apologised and cited our front page story that the NHS has been put on standby to roll out a vaccine from the start of December.
‘The headline I was reading in the Metro says vaccine on the front line in a month,’ Mr Murrison explained.
‘I hope Metro is correct but in the event we don’t get a game changer soon, we are seriously going to have to think of a Plan B.’
Sir Simon Stevens, the head of NHS England, confirmed he was ready to ‘fire the starting gun’ on vaccination. ‘We reached an agreement with GPs to ensure they will be doing that, and we’ll be writing to practices this week to get them geared up to start by Christmas,’ he told BBC Radio 4’s Today.
MPs voted by 516 votes to 38 for lockdown last night as the daily death toll soared to a six-month high of 492. The NHS was placed on its highest level of alert and the extremely clinically vulnerable were told to shield again.
Labour supported the lockdown motion but 32 Tories voted against and Mr Johnson was savaged by his own side during the debate. Philip Davies slammed the ‘so-called Conservative’ government for removing freedoms, adding: ‘People are not stupid, they can
see that the rules don’t make sense.’ And former PM Theresa May, who abstained in the vote, said an official prediction that deaths could reach
4,000 a day was ‘wrong even before it was used’. She demanded answers on the damage that lockdown will cause.
In a video message to the Confederation of British Industry, the PM insisted the lockdown would end on December 2. But he did not rule out an extension when challenged by Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer during prime minister’s questions. He said: ‘It depends on us all doing our bit now to make sure that we get the “R” down. I have no doubt that we can and that we will be able to go forward from December 2 with a very different approach.’
Health secretary Matt Hancock insisted the impact of the pandemic would be worse without the new restrictions being imposed.
‘Ultimately this comes down to a judgement on how we best lead a nation through an incredibly difficult period with a virus that exists only to multiply, and a virus that lives and breathes on the essence of what it is to be human,’ he said.