Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what criteria his Department uses to determine which areas are under tier 3 covid-19 restrictions.

Decisions on tiers are made by Ministers based on public health recommendations informed by the case detection rate in all age groups and in particular, among those over 60 years old; how quickly case rates are rising or falling; positivity in the general population; pressure on the National Health Service; and local context and exceptional circumstances such as a local but contained outbreaks.

As decisions are informed by a range of factors, it is possible for variation between individual factors when comparing areas.