Covid-19: Winter Plan

Damian Green Excerpts

Monday 23rd November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Damian Green (Ashford) (Con)]

After the tremendous news about testing and the encouraging developments on vaccines, may I welcome the news that the blanket national lockdown is ending? In the spirit of a wise constituent who told me that if the Government imposes stupid rules, we will all stop obeying the sensible rules as well, may I ask my right hon. Friend that the new tiers be imposed at a local level—districts, rather than counties or regions? Restrictions that people feel are unfair to their particular community will simply not be respected or obeyed, and that itself will have a damaging effect on our long-term health.

[The Prime Minister]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend and for the wisdom of his constituent, but I respectfully disagree. The people of this country have been obeying the rules to an astonishing degree. It is thanks to the heroic effort of the people of this country in following the guidance and the recent measures that we have the R down in the way that we have and that we have got the incidence down in some of those areas where the disease was really taking off—if we look at the graphs, we see that in the north-west in particular. It is now starting to track down across the country. I have every confidence in the wisdom of the British people to follow sensible guidance and rules. On my right hon. Friend’s point about local versus regional, alas, the disease is no respecter of borough boundaries. We have to have some regions in which to constitute the tiers that are sensible and large enough.