Time to fire up the engines, says PM
Johnson gets back to work with plan for gradual loosening of lockdown to put economy back on track without risking second wave of virus
BORIS JOHNSON has promised to “fire up the engines” of the economy with a plan for “refining” the coronavirus lockdown which he will reveal by the end of this week.
The Prime Minister said his decisions on lifting restrictions would be taken with “the maximum possible transparency”, adding that he would “share all our working and our thinking, my thinking, with you, the British people”.
He will hold a series of meetings with key ministers this week to finalise details of how different sectors, includmore ing businesses and schools, could start easing their way back without risking a second wave of the virus.
Government scientific advisers will then brief Mr Johnson on the risk involved in lifting each measure, before he and his ministers make the “difficult choice” of which restrictions to ease and which to keep in place.
Downing Street sources confirmed that the Prime Minister was expected to share his plans with the nation by the end of the week.
Prof Chris Whitty, the Chief Medical Officer, said yesterday that sending children back to school this term would be one of the options to be risk-assessed by scientists, as he hinted that younger children might be less prone to infection than older ones.
As the number of new hospital deaths from the virus fell to 360, the lowest since March 30, Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, disclosed that hospitals now had so much spare capacity that elective surgery and some cancer treatments would be restarted.
There were more signs yesterday that lockdown adherence was fraying, as increasing numbers of people took to the roads to go back to work while more retailers reopened.
It came after police chiefs warned they could no longer enforce the lockdown rules because it made “no sense” to ask people to move on from beaches or parks while allowing people to queue by the dozen at DIY stores.
Business leaders also begged the
Government for clarity over what is going to happen so they can plan ahead.
On his first full day back at work since recovering from Covid-19, Mr Johnson made a surprise address to the nation outside No 10 where he said the country was “making progress” thanks to the “grit and guts” of the population during the trials of lockdown.
He said there were “real signs now that we are passing through the peak” and “beginning to turn the tide”, adding that if the virus were a mugger, “then this is the moment when we have begun together to wrestle it to the floor”. In a direct address “to British business, to the shopkeepers, to the entrepreneurs, to the hospitality sector, to everyone on whom our economy depends”, he said: “I understand your impatience ... I want to get this economy moving as fast as I can.”
Mr Johnson said Britain was “coming now to the end of the first phase of this conflict” and that in the coming second phase he would “begin gradually to refine the economic and social restrictions and, one by one, to fire up the engines of this vast UK economy.”
He said he would be “saying much about this in the coming days”. The Prime Minister disclosed that he would be meeting Sir Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, this week as he sought to build a consensus with opposition on the best way forward.
The Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) was due to meet today and on Thursday before giving ministers a wide-ranging assessment of how different decisions would affect
‘I understand your impatience ... I want to get this economy moving as fast as I can’