New national lockdown fear

Boris warns of tougher curbs as Starmer calls for a shutdown across England

BORIS Johnson will decide today whether to introduce stricter coronavirus restrictions as he faces calls from Labour to bring in a national lockdown.

The Prime Minister warned yesterday that curbs were ‘probably about to get tougher’ as Government sources said more areas of England could be plunged into Tier Four in days.

Under the strict measures, already in place across three-quarters of the country, only essential shops such as supermarkets are allowed to open and people are meant to stay at home.

Mr Johnson said he was also considering further closures of schools.

Cabinet sources said they expected the Government’s ‘Covid- O’ committee, which makes decisions on lockdown restrictions, would meet today to decide on the next steps to take.

Last night, Sir Keir Starmer demanded an immediate nationwide lockdown as he warned the ‘virus is clearly out of control’. The Labour leader added: ‘Let’s not have the Prime Minister saying, “I’m going to do it, but not yet”.

‘That’s the problem he has made so many times. Nationwide lockdown – the Prime Minister has hinted that that’s going to happen, but he’s delaying again; and we can’t afford that again.’

Appearing on The Andrew Marr Show on BBC One yesterday, Mr Johnson said he was ‘entirely reconciled to doing what it takes to get the virus down’ and warned of a ‘tough period ahead’.

He said vaccinating more people would provide a way out of restrictions and that he hoped ‘tens of millions’ would be vaccinated in the next three months.

The Prime Minister stuck by his prediction that the situation would be better by the spring, but added: ‘It may be that we need to do things in the next few weeks that will be tougher in many parts of the country. I’m fully, fully reconciled to that – and I bet the people of this country are reconciled to that because until the vaccine really comes on stream in a massive way, we’re fighting this virus with the same set of tools.’

Mr Johnson said the Government was assessing whether Tier Four restrictions were tough enough to control the spread of the virus or if further steps were needed, adding: ‘We’ve got to keep things under constant review.’

Asked whether people could be restricted to an hour’s exercise a day or a complete ban on any households mixing could be introduced, he replied: ‘There are obviously a range of tougher measures that we would have to consider.

I’m not going to speculate now about what they would be.

‘Clearly, school closures – which we had to do in March – is one of those things. It’s not something we necessarily want to do.’

A Government source said last night that ministers were looking at putting even more areas of England into Tier Four.

Professor Sir Mark Walport, a member of the Government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), said it would be difficult to keep the new, fasterspreading strain of the virus under control without ‘much tighter’ social-distancing measures.

Speaking on The Andrew Marr Show, the former chief scientific adviser said: ‘It’s clear that this variant is transmitting more readily – it’s transmitting more readily in younger age groups as well.

‘It’s important to note that it doesn’t appear to cause worse disease or that it’s going to be more resistant to the effects of the vaccine, but it is going to be very, very difficult to keep it under control without much tighter social- distancing measures.’

Sir Keir insisted there could be ‘no more dither, no more delay’, adding: ‘The longer you delay the difficult decisions, the worse it is on the health front, the worse it is on the economic front.’

Responding to his remarks, a No10 source said: ‘The Prime Minister has been consistently clear that we are driven by the need to protect the NHS and save lives – unlike Labour, who have spent ten months playing party politics.

‘We have moved more areas into Tier Four to bear down on the new variant and escalated other areas into Tier Three. This targeted approach is the right one.’

‘No more dither, no more delay’