Now that the NHS has spare capacity, the reason for lockdown has gone

sir – The idea of the lockdown was to create time so that the capacity of the NHS could be expanded to meet the expected initial peak of infections.

The NHS capacity has now reached its target and there seem to be spare beds in general hospitals. The Nightingale hospitals are barely in use.

The NHS is as ready as it is going to be. In which case why are we persisting with the lockdown?

Peter Richards

Lytchett Matravers, Dorset

sir – There has been discussion of when lockdown will end and whether it will continue to apply to people over 70 after ending for younger people.

The answers can be found in the Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (England) Regulations 2020. By Regulation 3 the Secretary of State for Health personally (not the Cabinet or the Prime Minister) is under a statutory duty to keep constantly under review the need for the restrictions, and to conduct a formal review at least every 21 days, the current period expiring on May 7. As soon as the Secretary of State considers that any restrictions or requirements in the Regulations are no longer necessary as a public-health response to coronavirus, he must publish a direction terminating them.

To “protect the NHS” is not a permissible reason to maintain a restriction in place.

The powers of the Secretary of State are to maintain a restriction or to terminate it. He has no power to modify a restriction or to impose new ones. So he cannot direct that some restriction apply only to those over 70.

The statutory duty of the Secretary of State is enforceable by judicial review in the High Court.

The Regulations themselves expire on September 26, whereupon lockdown will simply cease.

His Honour Richard Seymour QC

East Hanningfield, Essex

sir – I am 79 and living on borrowed time since a vascular operation in 2011, which I had only a 30 per cent chance of surviving. Happily, thanks to the surgeon’s skill, I am still here, but unhappily I am deprived of living life as I wish.

There is no salmon or trout fishing this year; no golf, no holiday, no restaurants; no visits to the pub.

Unlike the state of Missouri, I do not have the money to sue China, which I believe responsible for the state of my life. Many good months of my twilight years have been stolen and will never be regained.

Ian DR Cox

Aldeburgh, Suffolk

sir – It is probable that mistakes relating to lockdown, testing and PPE would have been made whatever government was in the driving seat.

The incredible balancing act of getting back to normal will require brave decisions, some of which will be wrong – but let them be decisions we take as a nation without turning Covid-19 into a political football.

John Waiting

Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire