Who said it

“I think, frustrating as it is for all of us, Christmas is not going to be normal this year. But that said, the prime minister and everyone else, we’re looking at ways to see how families can spend some time with each other over the Christmas period” - Chancellor Rishi Sunak.

“There wasn’t sufficient clarity around the previous tiered system. We saw economic support lagging some time after announcements made around the tiered system, in fact we saw a real series of conflicts actually with local leaders, different areas being pitted against each other. We cannot have that again” - Shadow chancellor Anneliese Dodds. “We need methodical, measured clarity, not what we’ve seen before, which is over-briefing and then pulling back the drawbridge at the last minute, mixed messages: stay at home, go to work, stay at home, go to work”

- Shadow business minister Lucy Powell.

“In reality we can’t ban Christmas and to do so would simply lead to breaches and what are you going to do about that?” - Calum Semple, professor of child health and outbreak medicine at Liverpool University.

“Even the best deal we could get would have been counted as one of the hardest imaginable Brexits three or four years ago when we started to look at this” - Paul Johnson, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies.

“I would like to see UK politicians refraining from using rhetoric or a vocabulary as if we were adversaries fighting against each other. We are struggling to build a strong partnership for our future. This is what we owe to our fellow citizens on both sides” - French MEP Nathalie Loiseau.