Tory disquiet over road map builds ahead of Commons vote

PROMINENT MP Mark Harper has fuelled expectations of a Tory revolt on extending the country’s emergency coronavirus laws by calling for a “road map to freedom that is based on data, not dates”.

As The Sunday Express reported Boris Johnson faced a backbench rebellion this week as MPs vote on prolonging the laws until October, Mr Harper said such a move would contradict the Prime Minister’s previous pledges on the restoration of the country’s freedoms.

Writing in The Sunday Telegraph, Mr Harper – chairman of the informal Covid Recovery

Group of Tory MPs – noted Mr Johnson had said when announcing his road map out of the lockdown that it would “guide us cautiously but irreversibly towards reclaiming our freedoms” by June 21.

“Retaining most temporary provisions of the Coronavirus Act until October is not consistent with this pledge and will raise concerns that curbs will be reintroduced in the autumn,” Mr Harper wrote.

He also challenged the Government’s thinking on its road map to recovery, saying “reasonable people” would wonder if Ministers had struck the right balance in continuing present guidelines curbing family gatherings through Easter.

The Forest of Dean MP said that given the “exemplary” success of Britain’s vaccination rollout, the Government’s road map appeared “almost entirely focused on dates rather than the increasingly positive data on deaths and hospital admissions”.

“Staying with your family won’t just be illegal for Easter weekend, it will be unlawful until May 17 at the earliest – whatever the data say. The road map is ‘dates, not data’,” Mr Harper wrote.

He called on the Government to show such restrictions were still “proportionate, reasonable and grounded in evidence”.